My Cursor Keeps Turning White in Microsoft Word Without Typing

Anonymous
2022-08-15T21:33:58+00:00

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?

Microsoft 365 and Office | Word | For home | Windows

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  1. Anonymous
    2022-09-23T21:06:04+00:00

    Microsoft customer support and I spent 9 hours going over this over a month ago before they gave up by telling me that rolling back the updates would help. They even allowed me to screenshare the problem and still nothing worked. This happened with two support agents over the course of those 9 hours.

    Nothing has helped over a month later, and Microsoft is pretending this isn't happening so they don't need to service a still functional 8 year old product. Have to get more 365 subscribers somehow...

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  2. Anonymous
    2022-09-24T04:46:07+00:00

    Thanks for the info.

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  3. Anonymous
    2022-09-25T03:23:05+00:00

    Have you try “ Disable hardware graphics acceleration” in the advanced options?It works for me.

    But, when I scroll over a large .docx file with about 20 pictures, the file loads very slowly.

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  4. Anonymous
    2022-09-27T16:30:53+00:00

    I'm using Win 11 and I also had the same issue that my cursor turned white whenever I use google doc and inside other type box, I found this YouTube video very helpful https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6hN8LrGogzY

    It's better to follow along with the video, I'll also list the steps below.

    • Go to Start
    • Look for the application "RUN" by scrolling through the file or type in the search, open it
    • Type in "MAIN.CPL" and click 'okay' (this will open the mouse properties)
    • On the upper section of the window, click on the tab "Pointer Options"
    • In the visibility section, uncheck the box "hide pointer while typing" if that is checked (not done yet)
    • On the upper section of the window, click on the tab "Pointers"
    • In the Customize box, scroll down to "Text Select", click on it, on the right bottom click on browse,
    • Scroll through the list until you see "beam_r" click on it and click open
    • Lastly click Apply

    The steps may look messy so I would highly recommend you to follow the video. Hopefully this helps.

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  5. Anonymous
    2022-09-27T20:25:10+00:00

    I believe the beam_r mode helped a bit since it doesn't turn white i think , but it still is not great since this beam_r cursor has a white outline-stroke all around it which makes my work also a bit difficult.

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