Cursor problems Wd 2003

[Nyco_ork]

I am now experiencing the problems I have seen others post on this forum,
about the cursor disappearing in Word 2003. Actually, the problem is even
more complicated than a disappearing cursor. Sometimes I have a double
cursor. Sometimes the double cursor straddles a letter at a time (cursor on
each side of the letter). Sometimes one part of the double cursor
(nonblinking) stays at one point on the page and the other part (blinking) is
located where I want to work. Those things are odd, but I could live with
them, I guess -- although the double cursor, when the two parts are two close
together, has confused me at times.

The worst thing is the disappearing cursor. It seems to happen in the Print
Layout view. If I go to Normal view, I can see it again, but I don't like
working in Normal view, and I have very long documents I'm working with. When
the cursor disappears, I can't tell where I'm working anymore. I can still
type; in fact, it follows along as I'm typing, but when I stop typing, the
cursor is gone, and I'm not sure I can begin typing again.

I've tried all the fixes listed in the forum, and some that aren't: gone to
500% zoom and back; loaded Word using the Winword /a command line; copied and
pasted my documents to new, blank forms; shut the program down; modified the
styles being used in the documents. It doesn't even help if I remove all the
styles except the default text setting, which is 12 point Bookman ITC Bookman
Light, a Windows built-in font that has never had problems before.

These files were imported as Word 2000 files. I never had problems like this
in Word 2000.

I should add that this problem is quite erratic. When it shows up, it won't
go away, even if I close and reopen the program. Other times it doesn't
happen so often, or it goes away after a while. Totally baffling.

Any help would be appreciated.

RB

 

[Graham Mayor]

The problem is most likely to be caused by an adverse interaction with the
display driver. Word 2003 makes bigger demands on the screen driver than did
2000. You could start by updating the display driver and/or reducing its
hardware acceleration.


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Graham Mayor - Word MVP


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[Nyco_ork]

Graham, I'll give that a try, but I'm doubtful that's causing the problem.
The computer is an IBM Thinkpad A31p, with ATI mobility chip, aamd the driver
has been updated several times since I got the computer. I do some pretty
fancy graphics on this and its companion computer, which is nearly identical.
I even do DVD editing and authoring, as well as Photoshop graphics, with no
problem. I don't see how it would choke on a Word Processor cursor. But as I
say, I'll check for updates.

Since I posted the first message, I think I've found a small clue. I'm
working my way through one of my long documents, and the edits are building
up. (But turning off tracking edits did not help the problem.) I am now
nearing the end of this manuscript, and am jumping to my new edit points when
I first load the document, using the document map. The problem seems to occur
when I first start working. After a while the cursor "reappears." It seems as
if the cursor is "working" its way from the beginning of the document to the
new work location, and it finally gets there.

FWIW, I've also tried checking and unchecking the "smart cursor" box in
Options, and that made no difference either.

This is maddening. The main reason I upgraded was a couple of bugs in 2000
-- it wouldn't do a proper "Document compare" of these large documents, and
the comments kept corrupting the documents. (I had lots of comments, and if I
printed them, the program added locating page numbers to the comments, but
then wouldn't update the page numbers in subsequent revisions. Eventually the
file got corrupted.)

I had hoped that by waiting to the end of the 2003 cycle, the bugs would be
worked out. I guess I was being overoptimistic.

RB

 

[Graham Mayor]

Do you have Norton AV? Turn off its office plug-in, which causes all kinds
of spurious problems in Word.
Does it do it in Word's safe mode (Press and hold CTRL whilst starting
Word).
If not then the problems are external to Word - see
http://www.gmayor.com/what_to_do_when_word_crashes.htm then
http://word.mvps.org/FAQs/AppErrors/ProbsOpeningWord.htm

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Graham Mayor - Word MVP


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[Nyco_ork]

Graham,

I do not use Norton AV; I use Trend Micro. I also don't let it run in the
background. I run it manually.

I just tried Safe Mode, and it still happens, so it's not something external
to Word.

RB

 

[Graham Mayor]

I can't say I have come across this exact scenario before - but my money is
still on display driver issues.

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Graham Mayor - Word MVP


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[Nyco_ork]

Graham, I haven't actually updated the driver yet, but it is a recent driver
-- had a crash not long ago and updated drivers during recovery. I did slow
down the video hardware acceleration, and that didn't change anything.

I'm narrowing this down to a question of document size. These are long
documents, as I said, about 71,000 words each. Whether the cursor is at the
beginning or the ending, it acts up like this when I first open the document.
If I go work another document for a while, then come back to the long
document, the cursor seems to have "settled down." Also, if I copy and paste
two or three chapters into a new document and work on the material in that
shorter format, the problem doesn't occur at all. I don't like doing that,
because sometimes I get confused and work on the wrong document by mistake.

I've checked out the files on my other machine, which still uses Word 2000,
and there is no problem there at all. This is strictly a Word 2003 problem. I
used to have a problem in 2000, whereby when I worked on the bottom line of a
page in Print Layout view, where there was text on the following page, and
tracking was on, the page image kept flickering on and off. I had to go into
Normal mode to work on the bottom line. That drove me crazy. Now, with this
update, I've traded bugs. Instead of that bug I have this one. I either have
to switch documents, or go into Normal view for a paragraph or so until the
cursor settles down, then go back into Page Layout view.

When I get a chance to go the IBM site, I'll download the newer video
driver, if there is one. Last time I checked, a few months ago, there wasn't
one. Microsoft offers a later driver for this chip, but it doesn't have all
the features of the OEM driver, so I use the IBM versions.

RB

 

[Nyco_ork]

Graham, I finally figured it out. Or should say, I fixed it by accident, by
trying to fix something else. I was trying to get rid of the "do you want to
save?" dialogue every time I closed a file, so I unchecked every option
involving Smart Tags, and stripped the options from all my files in which
they were embedded. That, it turns out, was causing the cursor problem. I
guess when a large file is first opened, the program is so busy searching for
Smart Tags that it can't handle the cursor focus properly until it's finished
its opening search. That's my take on it, anyway.

RB

 

[Graham Mayor]

Thanks for the feedback

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Graham Mayor - Word MVP


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