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

Yes I can reproduce the problem with the cursor.

The question that I wondered about is, "What is the expected behavior?" I was surprised that you (and I) can select the watermark in Step #5. I tried in two other versions of Word and was not allowed to select the watermark after opening the header.

In all versions of Word I tested in I was able to use Insert > Watermark dialog to edit the text, and there was no problem with the cursor doing it that way.

Maybe the problem is Word 2011 should not have let you select the object in step #5.

OK, here's an example of the disappearing cursor that I seem to be able to reproduce reliably, even in a separate user account with no customizations:

1. Download the sample file at:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/kntjo809pm6o5jc/Guidelines%202014%20FR.docx?dl=0

2. Open the sample file in Word.
3. Scroll down to page 3, where the body text starts.
4. Double-click on the page header to open the header.
5. Right-click on the "PROVISOIRE" watermark that's part of the header and that is in the background behind the body text.
6. Select "Edit Text…" in the contextual menu.
7. Exit the Edit WordArt Text dialog box with or without editing the text. (Doesn't seem to matter.)
8. Double-click on body text to exit header.
9. Insert the I-beam cursor somewhere inside the body text and start pressing holding down the Left or Right cursor key.

When I do this on my Mac, the blinking I-beam cursor disappears altogether until I release the cursor key.

Can you reproduce this?

Pierre Igot

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

OK - but for now let's try to figure out the cursor problem. Do you (not referring just Pierre but anyone who has this problem) have a document that you can share with the world that exhibits the problem? If you do, that would be great. We (the rest of the world) can try to replicate the problem on our own Macs. If you have such a document or encounter one in the future upload it to OneDrive, DropBox or other sharing service and provide a link to it. 

If I can replicate the problem on my own Mac I'd be happy to do what I can to get someone at Microsoft to look at it,

I believe I have made it quite clear that I have had problems with the blinking cursor in Word since version 2004, and through a variety of hardware changes and system upgrades, all the way to today, with Office 2011 on a 2014 Mac Pro and Yosemite. In light of this, it's very hard for me to believe that it might be a specific hardware/software configuration that is causing the problem.

Yes, the ultimate goal would be to find a document where the problem is irrefutably reproducible on a variety of machines. I don't have access to a variety of machines, so such an investigation would require at the very least cooperation between users and at best the collaboration of Microsoft's own team of engineers.

I am glad to hear that you are not dismissing my problems altogether, but until I see a bunch of users saying, "Yes, I have the same problem with the same document (or type of document) on my computer", I am afraid we're not going to get anywhere. 

As always, it seems that I, as the end user, am the one expected to do all the hard work of gathering the required evidence. In case this isn't obvious: I also have a job, and a life. There is only so much that I can do to help move things forward. The very fact that it's so hard to get people to take these problems seriously can be very discouraging at times.

I understand how software development works. But at the same time it would be more encouraging to see signs that Microsoft's own staff is taking things more seriously. There are just so many things that don't work right, haven't worked right for years, and are not getting fixed… including perfectly reproducible problems such as this one:

Delete inserts an extra paragraph mark

I mean, how obvious do things have to be?

Pierre Igot

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

Hi Pierre,

If it makes you feel better, I also notice that on occasion that the cursor does not come up right away. It doesn't seem to happen with any regularity, and I haven't been able to nail down a specific set of steps to follow to make the problem happen consistently.

It would be great if we had a particular document that reliably exhibits the problem if we follow a specific set of steps in a given update of Word on a specific version of Mac OS X on certain macs with certain graphics cards with given amounts of RAM and nothing else is running at the time. That way we could tell Microsoft to have an engineer take a look at what's going on in the same setup and try to fix it. If the problem turns out to be something in Mac OS X, that's OK because Apple and Microsoft engineers have a good working relationship despite the marketing departments having fun with the whole rivalry thing. The Microsoft and Apple engineers do work together to smooth things out when there's a mutual bug. Microsoft also works with hardware manufacturers when necessary to smooth things out with drivers, etc.

There are significant differences in various versions of Mac OS X with regard to hardware and drivers. For example, my 1.5 yr old MacBook Pro will not connect to the internet via WIFI in Yosemite. Yet it has no problem with Mavericks. I bring this up because it suggests that if you reinstalled the same version of Mac OS X, and it turns out the problem is in that particular version of Mac OS X  on your hardware configuration, maybe wiping the drive and trying a different version of Mac OS X could clean up the problems you're having.