Why does the cursor disappear when I edit text in word 2003?

[Guest]

Try this. Open a new blank document. Type "This is a test." Double-click on
"a" and press the delete key on your keyboard. The "a" disappears and so does
the cursor.

Variation:
Type "This is a test." Double-click on "a" and press the backspace key. The
cursor disappears but the "a" does not. When I click in the document, the "a"
disappears and the cursor stays gone.

Configuration:
Alienware PC (Pentium 4) running XP SP2
Dual Multisync 2080UX monitors at 1600x1200
ATI FireGL V3100 video

 

[Guest]

Some additional info:
(1) When I say "cursor", I mean the flashing thing that marks the insertion
point, not the pointer that moves with my mouse.
(2) The WordPerfect options in tools are Not selected. This is not the
Block-Delete problem.
(3) Most of the autoformatting and autocorrection options are off.
(4) This is a fairly new machine. I have a firewall (Norton), I virus check
regularly and I use adaware
(5) I am using the trial version of Office. I have the student/teacher
version on order, but I don't report back to school until Monday. Is it
possible that this is a problem unique to the trial version?
(6) I've been using word on the pc and macintosh since about 1990. This is
my first experience with Word 2003 (I've been using Office 2004 on my Mac).
So, I am both an experienced user and a new user.

Thanks for any help you can provide.

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

My gut feeling is that this is most likely a display problem. If you are
confident your display driver is the latest version, try turning down the
hardware acceleration a notch.

--
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.

 

[Guest]

It turns out to be a side effect of the dogpile search toolbar. (!)

I keep this machine fairly pristine--I receive my email on a different
machine and don't download experimental content. I use it for course
development and video production.

But dogpile's been around for a while, gets good reviews, is a useful search
engine, so (fool that I am) I installed the dogpile toolbar in Internet
Explorer. To my surprise, it also installed an add-in into Word without
asking me.

The add-in lets you select some text, right-click for the context-menu, then
click on search in dogpile, which launches an instance of IE and transfers
your selected text to the dogpile search engine.

As soon as I realized dogpile had installed a Word Add-in, I uninstalled
dogpile. It was removed from IE by the uninstall, but stayed in Word. I had
to use Word's tool for removing a COM add-in (go to Tools | Customize and
select the Commands tab, select Tools, drag COM Add-ins to the menu and then
use it). This got rid of the dogpile add-in (though it left behind "dogpile
cursor search" on my context menu, but clicking that appears to do nothing).

Once dogpile was gone, Word behaved sensibly.

Woof! grrrrrrrr. . . .

Thanks again for your help. I hope this is useful to someone else.

- cem