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My cursor keeps turning white in Microsoft Word 2016 (I bought lifetime access), even without typing. I already tried changing the cursor settings so that it wouldn't disappear when typing, but that didn't do anything. After a few seconds the text selection cursor will turn white, and, if I hover over dark text, I can see the cursor outline. This has been happening in multiple documents, so not an isolated incident.
This started after a Microsoft update which forced me to log back into my Microsoft account to use Word about a week or two ago. I've tried everything I can find on the internet, but no luck yet. It's very hard to get work done if I can't see my cursor in Word, so what do I need to do to fix this issue so I can get back to work?
A family of Microsoft word processing software products for creating web, email, and print documents.
Locked Question. This question was migrated from the Microsoft Support Community. You can vote on whether it's helpful, but you can't add comments or replies or follow the question.
Hey,
I have the same problem in many programms but most often in Microsoft Edge. I tried installing the newest updates of windows, but still same problem.
So, Microsoft, are you planning on fixing this? This has been an ongoing problem for many users for close to three months!
I've had the exact same issue with MS Word (Office 2019) since I installed Win11 two days ago. Tried every solution so far (unchecking "hide cursor while typing", switching to the inverted cursor, turning on and off cursor trail and so on) and nothing seemed to help. However, I was able to fix the issue by simply changing the Office theme to Black or Dark Grey ("disable dark mode" has to be unchecked as well). So the "hide cursor while typing" is still on, cursor trail disabled and I am using the standard mouse cursor theme. Seems to me the issue is not with Windows, but with MS Word. No other apps (including MS Excel, Google Spreadsheets and simply typing into the browser search bar) are affected, only MS Word 2019. Interesting thing though is that I also have a laptop with Office 2019 on it, but it's running Win10. No issue there with MS Word so far. Same as my PC, the laptop has the latest updates for Windows and Office installed, so I think it has to do with Win11 and MS Word specifically. Hope it helps.
Yes, as we've noted here already, this is only a problem with Word using Windows 11. Haven't heard about switching the theme, but that is not a fix, just a patch. If users want their theme to be something else, this will not help, and it's not reasonable to ask users to switch Windows themes every time they want to use Word.
NO this affects other apps too, like edge and chrome. anytime you go into a text editing box it turns white. it's NOT just office related.
Nope. Still persists.
Hey Tim,
Not sure if you have found a solution to this, but i have. Now keep in mind im on windows 11, so i cant tell you if this works in windows 10. For me all i had to do was have a word document open, and go to File, Options, and then click Advanced. Once there scroll down, and uncheck "Use smart cursoring" Instantly fixed my issue. Hope this helps man!