Clicking to position the cursor at end of line

S

Scott Meyers

I often find myself wanting to click the mouse to put the cursor at the end of
the last line of a paragraph so I can continue editing there. Unfortunately, I
find that when I do this, Word often selects the entire line, which I then
overwrite when I start typing. Not what I want. Instead, it seems that I have
to either click somewhere very close to the last character in the line or click
somewhere in the line, then hit "End" to move to the end of the line. This is
slower and, to me, extremely counterintuitive -- none of the other programs I
use regularly behaves this way.

Can somebody explain to me why Word selects the line I'm clicking to the right
of and how this behavior could possibly benefit me? Also, is there any way to
turn this behavior off?

I'm using Word 2002.

Thanks,

Scott
 
J

Jay Freedman

Word doesn't normally behave the way you describe. Every (English)
version I've ever seen leaves the cursor at the end of the line when
you click to the right.

It's possible that you've somehow gotten a right-to-left language
enabled, maybe by pasting something from another document or web page.
Look in Control Panel > Regional and Language Options > Languages, and
also in Start > Programs > Microsoft Office > Office Tools > Language
Settings, to see if you have support enabled for anything other than
English.

--
Regards,
Jay Freedman
Microsoft Word MVP
Email cannot be acknowledged; please post all follow-ups to the
newsgroup so all may benefit.
 
S

Scott Meyers

Jay said:
It's possible that you've somehow gotten a right-to-left language
enabled, maybe by pasting something from another document or web page.
Look in Control Panel > Regional and Language Options > Languages, and
also in Start > Programs > Microsoft Office > Office Tools > Language
Settings, to see if you have support enabled for anything other than
English.
Click to expand...

Office XP must have installed support for multiple languages by default, because
there were a number of non-English languages enabled, but disabling all except
US English does not change Word's behavior. However, I've noticed something
else. When I move the cursor to the left of a line, I get a hollow
right-pointing cursor that indicates that clicking will select the entire line.
When I move the cursor to the right of a line, I get a yellow left-pointing
cursor whose upper part is shaded (to make it look 3D) that indicates that
clicking will select the entire line. Any idea what the significance of the
yellow cursor is? Again, only English is enabled in Office and in Win2K, but
clicking to the right of a line in word selects the entire line. Very irksome.

Thanks for all help and suggestions,

Scott
 
T

TF

Very definitely you have a right to left language enabled.

--
Terry Farrell - Word MVP
http://word.mvps.org/

: Jay Freedman wrote:
: > It's possible that you've somehow gotten a right-to-left language
: > enabled, maybe by pasting something from another document or web page.
: > Look in Control Panel > Regional and Language Options > Languages, and
: > also in Start > Programs > Microsoft Office > Office Tools > Language
: > Settings, to see if you have support enabled for anything other than
: > English.
:
: Office XP must have installed support for multiple languages by default,
because
: there were a number of non-English languages enabled, but disabling all
except
: US English does not change Word's behavior. However, I've noticed
something
: else. When I move the cursor to the left of a line, I get a hollow
: right-pointing cursor that indicates that clicking will select the entire
line.
: When I move the cursor to the right of a line, I get a yellow
left-pointing
: cursor whose upper part is shaded (to make it look 3D) that indicates that
: clicking will select the entire line. Any idea what the significance of
the
: yellow cursor is? Again, only English is enabled in Office and in Win2K,
but
: clicking to the right of a line in word selects the entire line. Very
irksome.
:
: Thanks for all help and suggestions,
:
: Scott
 
G

Guest

Click in various positions in your document. You may be surprised to find
that parts of it are indeed tied to another language (it's the document and
not your settings that determine this). We've addressed what to do in those
circumstances pretty thoroughly now but if this is what is required, come
back and we'll go through it again.
 
S

Scott Meyers

Click in various positions in your document. You may be surprised to find
that parts of it are indeed tied to another language (it's the document and
not your settings that determine this).
Click to expand...

If I create a brand new document in Word, I get the behavior I have described:
clicking to the right of a line selects the entire line. This suggests to me
that either something is whacked in normal.dot or some other factor is in play
here. Again, I appreciate all suggestions in trying to figure out what is going on.

Thanks,

Scott
 

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