turn off Windows word highlight?

[sixto]

Is it possible to turn off the feature in Windows in which it highlights the entire word when you select the first few or last few letters?

Thanks,
Sixto

[KarTek]

Which program are you using? Here in IE, I can select any combination of one or more letters while editing this post...

[sixto]

Happens in any Windows app I've used including this site with IE 7.

Here's how it works for me - take the sentence above. If I put the cursor between u and d in including and drag to the left, it picks up u then l then c etc. When I continue to drag over the space, it highlights all of including and the trailing space. When I continue to drag over d in used, it highlights all of used and continues to highlight entire words as I move left. The same thing happens when I drag to the right.

edit - I removed the word think so I changed the reference to including.

Sixto
87 300D

[MTI]

Not sure if this is what your mean:

In MS Word:

Tools, Options, Edit, uncheck "When selecting, automatically select entire word"

[raslaje]

Settings>Control Panel>(switch to Classic View if in Category View)>Mouse>Buttons>uncheck Turn on ClickLock

[sixto]

That removes the need to hold down the mouse button but it still highlights a word at a time

Sixto
87 300D

[raslaje]

When I checked the Turn on ClickLock box I went to your post #3 and my mouse did exactly what your's was doing.
Now I unchecked the box and back to normal.

If you have the box checked, that's your problem.

[sixto]

Checked or unchecked does the same thing for me. What changes is the need to hold down the left button to drag.

Sixto
87 300D

[raslaje]

Well our computers are not behaving the same way. I'm using XP Home with Service Pack 2 installed.

[sixto]

XP Home SP2 here but seems all Windows PCs behave the same for me. I'll try that setting on other PCs.

Sixto
87 300D

[raslaje]

Well I continued to play around with the selection mode last night and now I know exactly what your experiencing as I managed to somehow get myself in the same mode and now I see that unchecking the ClickLock box does not undo it. I don't know how I got into the mode except I remember playing around with Ctrl-mouse drag, Alt-mouse drag, esc, and going through the mouse troubleshooting program. I'm thinking that there must be some way to tell windows to select whole words or not, but obviously I'm not of much help at this stage.

[Benzadmiral]

Originally Posted by sixto

Happens in any Windows app I've used including this site with IE 7.

Here's how it works for me - take the sentence above. If I put the cursor between u and d in including and drag to the left, it picks up u then l then c etc. When I continue to drag over the space, it highlights all of including and the trailing space. When I continue to drag over d in used, it highlights all of used and continues to highlight entire words as I move left. The same thing happens when I drag to the right.

edit - I removed the word think so I changed the reference to including.

Sixto
87 300D

Sixto,

I'm in Firefox under Windows XP. The selection only shows what I've selected and nothing more. In your example above, if I select the left half of "including" and continue into the preceding space, it does not select all of "including" and the trailing space -- it only covers what I've deliberately selected.

Now in Word, turning on the Tools > Options > Edit > "When selecting, automatically select entire word" check box makes my mouse behave as you described. But there doesn't seem to be such a setting in Firefox.
.

[LaughingGravy]

Running XP, SP2, Firefox I just click once where I want my selection to start, even if in between letters in a word, then hold the shift key down and click at the end of what I want.

No click and drag.