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?
Solution 1:
After uninstalling Synergy, this immediately began working again for me. Synergy is definitely causing this issue in my situation.
Github symless/synergy:3044
Solution 2:
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
Solution 3:
I have run into a similar issue if you happen to be running Synergy (http://synergy-project.org/). 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.
Solution 4:
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.
Solution 5:
Right click in the message body. Worked for me, surprisingly.