Word auto-highlighting, how to make it STOP!

Anonymous
2014-01-17T18:00:43+00:00

How do you disable this STUPID feature?

I'm trying to highlight a single word or some part of a word for cut&paste operations and Word auto-highlights the whole line and sometimes the whole paragraph or page.

I can be using a mouse, I can be using the shift+arrow keys, it doesn't matter. The auto-highlight takes over.

it seems to be worse on any kind of bullets and numbering or any header/footer fields.

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auto-indent is another evil feature. cut and paste from a notepad  and the indent is changed on your bullets and numbering. pretty much control-v means indent text right ->

Microsoft 365 and Office | Word | For home | Windows

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  1. Jay Freedman 208.3K Reputation points Volunteer Moderator
    2017-01-28T23:02:01+00:00

    If you understand that the File tab should really be named "Things that affect the entire program and not just the active document", then you'll know why the Microsoft designers put Options there.

    When the ribbon was introduced in Word 2007, I heard a developer describe the Tools menu as the "junk drawer" of Word. As more features were added in each version, everything that didn't obviously fit in any of the other menus was thrown into the Tools menu.

    I can't say that the ribbon tabs are all laid out in an obvious manner, but hey, you've had a decade to get used to it.

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  2. Anonymous
    2017-01-28T23:08:00+00:00

    Appreciate your response, thanks!

    I just moved from 2003 in XP to 2010 in Win10 and hate both but guess I have to get used to it.

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  3. Anonymous
    2017-02-22T10:55:18+00:00

    Disabling the auto-selection of whole words is the key, BUT, MS s/w also decides to select the end-of-line (paragraph) mark when using mouse or keyboard extended selection. Only a keyboard intervention unselects it again. This is idiotic behaviour, especially as formatting attributes are stored in that paragraph mark, which most of the time I DON'T want to be copied.

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  4. Stefan Blom 352.5K Reputation points MVP Volunteer Moderator
    2017-02-22T13:31:57+00:00

    Disabling the auto-selection of whole words is the key, BUT, MS s/w also decides to select the end-of-line (paragraph) mark when using mouse or keyboard extended selection.        

    To prevent Word from selecting the paragraph mark, clear the "Use smart paragraph selection" option at File | Options | Advanced.

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  5. Anonymous
    2017-04-18T11:01:15+00:00

    Hey there!

    I have a totally different problem, but still related to selection. Suddenly I could only select whole paragraphs and I can no longer edit them without deleting them first. I think I have tried every mentioned setting in this thread but it won't work.

    BR

    Edit:

    Forgot to mention that I am using the "APA style report" style sheet and removed the content control, maybe that is somehow related in a weird way?

    Additionally, I can select small parts of headings or paragraphs I add, but it seems like I can't do it with paragraphs and headings created before one specific point of time.

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