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. Anonymous
    2017-10-13T08:08:23+00:00

    Thanks, this is towards the correct solution (I have already disabled "select entire word").

    My problem is selecting all the text on a line without the end of line (paragraph mark). Word automatically includes the paragraph mark when I select all the text (to copy and paste a given segment of text to multiple locations) and maneuvering with cursor keys I can do it by starting from the beginning of line, moving (with shift down) to the end of line (when I select the last char Word automatically includes the paragraph mark) and then pressing left key (shift still down) once.

    But this is ridiculous.

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  2. Anonymous
    2017-04-19T05:34:29+00:00

    To be honest, I feel pretty stupid right now...

    It seems like you can't edit the text that was already in the style sheet, explaining what you should do...

    I am sorry for wasting your time, have a great day!

    BR

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  3. 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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  4. Stefan Blom 352.5K Reputation points MVP Volunteer Moderator
    2016-03-25T23:19:07+00:00

    The insert key key does not solve the problem and the document is locked so one can't access the toolbars.

    It is a bug in Word. 

    OK, that is new information. You never mentioned anything about the document being "locked" in your previous posts in this thread. Most likely, that piece of information is crucial.

    In what way is the document locked? Are you saying that commands are greyed out or that the document appears to be frozen?

    Do you see this with a particular document only? It could be damaged or some form of corruption has occurred.

    Please share a document with the forum, if at all possible.

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  5. Stefan Blom 352.5K Reputation points MVP Volunteer Moderator
    2016-02-17T18:37:50+00:00

    I am having the highlighting problem in Word 2016 that I just paid a fortune for.

    This thread actually discusses several aspects of selecting (for example, selecting text in a form field, selecting text in the main body of a document). Could you expand on what you are trying to do and what you see instead?

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