Can't select text with mouse in Word or Outlook

I cannot select text with my mouse in Word and Outlook. I can for a little while, then I can't, so, I close and restart the applications again and all is well. This also means that I can't drag anything like text that I have selected with the keyboard or table widths or tabs in the ruler bar...

The cause was unknown until today when I narrowed it down to the Ctrl key.

That is, as soon as I use the Ctrl key (for copy, paste, undo or even by itself for the purpose of this test), my ability to select and drag is gone.

There are no sticky keys. I am using Office 2010 (Professional 14.0.6112.5000 32-bit on Windows 7 Pro SP1).

I have uninstalled and re-installed Office. I have tried several registry edits offered by my findings with no luck.

Any ideas?

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8 Answers

After uninstalling Synergy, this immediately began working again for me. Synergy is definitely causing this issue in my situation.

Github symless/synergy:3044

6

This kind of goes away if you press the Win key once. But is very annoying.

Other symptoms that may be related:

• Press the calc key and open the calculator twice
• Play/Pause key press twice also so doesn't work
• Zoom key in Microsoft Keyboard doesn't work

UPDATE

Synergy v1.8.2-stable

Bug #3044 - Unable to drag-select in MS Office

Finally they fixed the issue

4

I have run into a similar issue if you happen to be running Synergy (). If you happen to be using Synergy (or other similar software KVM type program), I would suggest attempting to kill that application, and see if the problem persists.

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I found this question when my user was having this same problem - only in Outlook, they could not select text or move the mouse in any new message after using the CTRL key once while writing one (although the mouse worked for moving between fields in the new message, like From, to, Subject, and in all other applications). Was shocked to discover that it immediately worked again after right clicking in the message body.

As for why/how this fixed the issue or the root cause - I haven't got a clue.

Hope this helps someone.

Right click in the message body. Worked for me, surprisingly.

Instead of re-installing Office, you can use the Office diagnostic tools which may repair the problem. There should be a button...In the Word Options window click on the Resources option and then click the Diagnose button next to the 'run Microsoft Office Diagnostics' option. It may take a while to complete the diagnostic tests so be patient. Also make sure you are connected to the internet in case the diagnostic application has to connect the Microsoft servers.

Check if your mouse or some of your keys are locked or unlocked. For ex: your NUM LOCK key or your Caps key. Which can interfere and can be a pain. Hope it helps :)

I run Microsoft FixIt 50123 and the problem was gone.

But I am not sure if was it which fixed the problem. Can anyone test?

Regards

I had a similar problem, not involving Ctrl key, but this was the first thing that came up in Google when I searched for help so thought I'd post my solution here for others.

Drag-select of words in Microsoft Word was inconsistently not working - the word would highlight, then on releasing the mouse button, the highlight was lost about 50% of the time - highly irritating.

I finally tracked it down to the fact I'd disabled my touch pad as was using a mouse - re-enabled the touch pad, problem solved!