Chaning the cursor - can it be done?

[Bert Coules]

I'm using Word 2000 under Windows XP Pro SP2. Is it possible to change the
appearance of the insertion point cursor? I know that the blink rate of the
vertical line can be adjusted right down to zero, but what I'd really like
to do is change the vertical line to a horizontal underscore. The
possibility doesn't seem to be mentioned in the help file, and a Google
search didn't throw anything up, but can it be done?

Many thanks,

Bert
www.bertcoules.co.uk

 

[Doug Robbins - Word MVP]

In the Control Panel, under the Accessibility Options>Display, you can
change the width that will certainly make it more visible.

--
Hope this helps.

Please reply to the newsgroup unless you wish to avail yourself of my
services on a paid consulting basis.

Doug Robbins - Word MVP

 

[Guest]

Hi! My problem is similar, sort of:

I have been using Word documents forever - all of a sudden, the blinking
cursor is a dot, like a "period" It is awful! I can't see it at all. Very
frustrating. I tried your fix but the control panel isn't specifically for
Word. This only happens in Word.

Let me add one interesting point, that may be a clue: right before this
happened, I was scroling down a long document and must have touched something
- all of a sudden, the 20+ pages were all on the screen at once, each one
very tiny, like thumbnails.

Now, when I start a new document, the new doc page comes up teeny-tiny, WITH
THAT DARN BLINKING "PERIOD" CURSOR!

Please help!

Thanks!

 

[Guest]

Oops.....sorry, forgot to say I am using Microsoft Office Word 2003,
Professional Edition.

thanks for your help!

 

[Guest]

After looking through other discussion sections here, I found a fix for a
fairly similar problem - I decided to try it since it was so odd. It worked!

I brought the doc up to 500%, and then back down to 100%.

Crazy! But it worked. Live and learn..........

Topnurse

 

[Bert Coules]

Hope this helps.

Thanks for the reply. I'll experiment with that, though it doesn't address
what I really want to do, which is to change the vertical cursor to a
horizontal one.

It strikes me as odd that a program as supremely reconfigurable as Word
doesn't permit such a basic adjustment to such a prominent feature.

Bert
www.bertcoules.co.uk

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

I would imagine you found that "fix" hundreds of times, as certainly we've
given that answer at least that many time. No one knows what causes the
problem or why that fixes it, but it's obviously just a minor display issue
with (luckily) a trivial fix.

--
Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft MVP (Word)
Words into Type
Fairhope, Alabama USA

Email cannot be acknowledged; please post all follow-ups to the newsgroup so
all may benefit.

 

[Beth Melton]

I've also found if you open your Display Properties, make no changes, and
then click OK it resolves it as well. I'm not sure what causes it either but
I encountered it frequently when using Word 2003.

Please post all follow-up questions to the newsgroup. Requests for
assistance by email cannot be acknowledged.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Beth Melton
Microsoft Office MVP

Coauthor of Word 2007 Inside Out:
http://www.microsoft.com/MSPress/books/9801.aspx#AboutTheBook

Word FAQ: http://mvps.org/word
TechTrax eZine: http://mousetrax.com/techtrax/
MVP FAQ site: http://mvps.org/

 

[Bert Coules]

In the Control Panel, under the Accessibility Options>Display, you can
change the width that will certainly make it more visible.

Doug, I just tried this. I discovered that, bizarrely, changing the width
of the cursor in Accessibility Options makes no difference to its appearance
in Word (though it has changed here, in Outlook Express). Altering the
blink rate, however, *does* have an immediate effect in Word.

I also found that reducing the blink rate to zero actually made the cursor
in Word *disappear* for most of the time.

Strange...

Bert
www.bertcoules.co.uk

 

[Doug Robbins - Word MVP]

Changing the width definitely makes a difference in Word 2007 on my
computer.

--
Hope this helps.

Please reply to the newsgroup unless you wish to avail yourself of my
services on a paid consulting basis.

Doug Robbins - Word MVP

 

[Bert Coules]

Changing the width definitely makes a difference in Word 2007 on my
computer.

Perhaps it's a feature that was only brought in after Word 2000? Certainly,
it has no effect on that program, on my machine, at least.

Thanks for your advice.

Bert
www.bertcoules.co.uk