Ignores first click

[dOinK]

When activating one of the application windows (e.g. Word or Excel) by
clicking the mouse on it (assuming it was inactive before) this first click
it ignored by the application. This means that I have to click one more time
after the window has received focus to get the cursor to move to where I
click.

Is there a way to have Office 2003 not ignore the first mouse click? I can't
find anything in the Options dialogs, but hope there might be some registry
setting or something.

Thanks,
dOinK

 

[Wally]

It's not ignoring the first click, it's using it to assign focus.

 

[dOinK]

MS Office (and some other applications, like Wordpad) is ignoring the first
click. I believe that focus is handled by the OS (WinXP in this case), it
can be set up to change focus without any clikcing, you know.

In any case, is there a way to make the Office applications treat the first
(focus giving) click as any other click, like most applications do (e.g.
notapad, outlook express, outlook 2002, a.s.o). I have used programs that
have a setting for this, and hope this behavior is not "hard coded" in the
Office 2003 suite.

Anyone

 

[Bob I]

Something in your operating system setup or configuration. The app
receives whatever gets passed to it. Try reducing the hardware
acceleration for the video adapter in the troubleshooting Button( move
the slider left a notch)

 

[dOinK]

Are you saying that this is not by design, that this behavior is particular
to my OS setup and that (e.g.) your system (Office 2003 suite) behaves
differently? I don't think so, I've seen this on several WinXP/Office
installations, and it would suprice me if it was such a common "error".
Please elaborate!

 

[Bob I]

Place "Outlook 2003" in the background and another "non-office" app has
focus. Move mouse cursor over a "message header" in non-focus Outlook,
click once, message is selected and Outlook window has focus, second
click opens the selected e-mail. If this doesn't work for you, something
is broken or maladjusted.

 

[dOinK]

Yes, that's right. As I pointed out in my reply to Wally, Outlook works the
way I want; the first click is NOT ignored. This is NOT the case for e.g.
Word or Excel.

So again, is there a way to make all Office applications NOT ignore the
first mouse click (the one that makes the OS give them focus)?

 

[Bob I]

Ah, but it does if you look closely, the first click selects the subject
under the cursor(which in your case is the "body of the document), to
verify operation, do the following

1. Place Word with TWO open documents tiled in background( but visible).
2. Click once in Word on the Document that was NOT the selected one when
you changed focus to the other app.( Observe the document clicked on is
NOW the one in the foreground and the document you were editing is
placed to the rear.)

 

[dOinK]

I believe that's because they are two separate windows. The cursor will not
appear where you click in the window, if it was not located there when the
window (document) lost focus.

 

[Bob I]

Look, the cursor doesn't move in an e-mail message in Outlook either.
I've tried give you methods to verify that the click is being passed, so
believe what you want, the click is getting passed.

 

[dOinK]

Well... the cursor DOES move in a message in Outlook, provided that you DO
NOT use Word as message editor (a setting in Outlook). In other words:

MS Word ignores the first click! So does Excel. Outlook does not.

I would like to know if and how I can make Word and Excel (and any other
application that behaves the same way) not ignore the mouse click that
brings their windows in focus. The programmers should have made a way to
customize this.

 

[Bob I]

No, it does NOT MOVE within the body of the message.

 

[dOinK]

Strange - here it does (Outlook 2003). And that's how I want it to work, so
I have no complaints about that If only the rest of the suit behaved the
same way...

 

[Bob I]

Interesting enough it is consistent here. It sounds like you may be
receiving an additional "click" in Outlook. Is there the possibility
that some 3rd party software is adding to the systems processing?
Anti-virus, or some "helper" application?

 

[dOinK]

If the message window contains a sent or received message, the cursor will
not move. This doesn't really matter, since you normally don't need the
cursor unless you want to edit a text. The sent and received messages can
not be edited in Outlook.

So: the cursor I was talking about - which DOES move according to the first
mouse click - is in the window of a message being composed. I guess you'll
find the same on your system (i've seen the same behavior on two computers
so far).

 

[Bob I]

Actually the message Window I tested in was a fresh one created by
clicking "New mail message". Altho I am using "Plain Text", and not HTML
or rtf.

 

[dOinK]

Heh... you're right, I see the same here: The first click is ignored for a
window editing a plain text message, but not when it is in html format. More
than one programmer involved, I presume ;-)

 

[dOinK]

Apparently the Office developers have not been very consistent regarding the
"first click issue". E.g. when Word receives focus from a click in the
Document Map, it doesn't ignore that click, but moves to the location where
the user clicked.

I wish some developers read this, and decide to be more consistent in future
releases!

 

[Bob I]

Try HTML in Word.

Apparently the Office developers have not been very consistent regarding the
"first click issue". E.g. when Word receives focus from a click in the
Document Map, it doesn't ignore that click, but moves to the location where
the user clicked.

I wish some developers read this, and decide to be more consistent in future
releases!