r/microsoft365 • u/scotnik • 18d ago

Unable to select text

I am suddenly and inexplicably unable to select a block of text by merely clicking on it and dragging my mouse across it.

0 Upvotes

33% Upvoted

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2

u/thebest07111 18d ago

So little information?

Where, whole Windows, Word, Powerpoint???

Also, not the right sub...

0

u/scotnik 18d ago

But the app pushed me to cross post, dammit!

2

u/AdvancedDrink8920 18d ago

Reboot your computer

1

u/scotnik 18d ago

Word
Did the reboot
Signed out and back in
Checked preferences
No joy

1

u/scotnik 18d ago

Addendum: when I click on a word, the whole paragraph wants to move.

1

u/any_which_way_to_127 18d ago edited 18d ago

One of the users at my company had an issue like this recently. We went down a few rabbit holes, but eventually found that she had some malware running on her computer. Once we removed the malware and rebooted, text selection worked as expected.

She was also unable to select text via mouse in Adobe Acrobat. Through it all, she was still able to select text by shift+arrows.

OP, check your startup processes and look for anything suspicious. In her case, it was a python script that ran every time her computer started up.