Why does the blinking I-beam cursor keep disappearing when editing text inside tables in Word 2011?

Because of problems with Yosemite, I did a clean install of everything, INCLUDING Microsoft Office, a few months back. It never made any difference to any of the long-standing problems I am experiencing with Word 2011 (not that I had any hope that it would).

The disappearing cursor problems were there before then (they've been there since Word 2004, in fact, as I have documented on my blog, including with video recordings) and they are still there in Word 2011 today. Just because you are not experiencing them yourself does not mean that they don't exist.

I am also suspicious of people saying that they don't see any problems, because I am someone who works very fast and is particularly sensitive to such issues. I expect 100% responsiveness at all times. People who work more slowly and without trying to use the full power of their machine might not notice these issues.

Also, such problems are much more evident when editing existing documents than when composing new documents from scratch, which tend to be very different tasks. I often have to work with existing documents, mostly created by other people on other machines, and that is not the same as creating your own documents, with your own style sheets, your own settings, etc.

Hi Pierre,

I just came from your question about the scrolling and copy problem.

So things were not better in Safe Boot. I'm ready to suggest getting out the dynamite and do a complete removal and reinstallation of Office:

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Reinstall Instructions:

Check the name of your startup volume. Be certain it has a name and that the name contains no special characters.

If you have removed any Mac OS X system fonts, replace them before proceeding. Make sure your Mac has a live internet connection, then click the Apple menu in the upper left corner of your screen. Choose Software Update and install the Mac OS updates.

In order to have a successful reinstall of Microsoft Office you must **completely remove Office 2011** and then reinstall. Follow the instructions in the link carefully.

Allow AutoUpdate utility to do its work when it comes up at the end of the installation process.

Then run a font utility such as **Font Book application** to validate ALL your fonts. Delete older editions of duplicate fonts. Delete fonts that do not completely pass validation. Then restart your Mac and immediately empty the trash to get rid of the bad fonts.

Run **Disk Utility** to verify the startup volume and repair disk permissions.

Thanks for confirming.

However, it is quite clear that it'll take much more than our reports for Microsoft to ever do anything about it. Maybe they are waiting for Microsoft Office users to start committing mass suicide or something.

Pierre Igot

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BETALOGUE - Weblog at http://www.betalogue.com | Twitter: @betalogue

I regularly have cursor disappear in Mac Word.  Currently using 14.4.8 and OSX 10.9.5.

I have installed all UPDATES for Word and have had the same vanishing curso problem while using various versions.  

Cursor does appear and blink elsewhere, such as the Chrome browser I am using right now.

I guess I am the most jinxed Office 2011 user in the world and I have all these bugs that no other Office user has.

Either that, or no one is making much of a real effort to reproduce user-reported problems. 

As for Draft View in Word 2011, sure. I could also give up on Word 2011 altogether. Except that I can't. Ha!

It seems that Microsoft Office 2011 and OS X Yosemite have one thing in common: They both work great, as long as you don't attempt to actually USE them to do stuff.