Disappearing Cursor

[Flavorfulcorpse]

Have any of you had your cursor disappear while writing in MS Word? I was writing and from one sentence to the next my cursor quit showing up. If you have had the issue, how'd you fix it?

 

[StillStunned]

Word can do strange things. I was doing a Read Aloud on a text for a client the other day, and not only the cursor disappeared, but the grey highlight that jumps from word to word as well. This continued for a paragraph and a half, then it reappeared.

 

[Flavorfulcorpse]

I've gone through the steps suggested on the internet by MS and others; nothing has worked so far. Who better to ask than the ones who write, right?

 

[Flavorfulcorpse]

Update: After nearly losing my damned mind, I cut and Pasted the story into Google docs and made a couple of minor edits. I also renamed the original Word doc and deleted it from my file folder. I started a new Word doc and then copied and pasted the copy from Google over, and that seems to have fixed the issue, for now anyway.

 

[anthrodisiac]

Could have been file artifacts. I had some in a book I wrote a while back and nothing I did got rid of them, so I had to copy and past chunks around the artifacts to extract them. Took forever, it was 1000 pages.

Turning it off and back on again can help, too, in some cases, but it sounds like the issue was the file/content itself, so probably the right approach you took.

 

[TheLobster]

Glitches like this are usually transient and should go away once you restart the program in the question.

 

[Flavorfulcorpse]

I was just typing and noticed that the cursor was gone. I tried to restart and, like I said, did everything that was suggested on the internet from MS and other techie sites. None of it worked; I did what I did as a shot in the dark, just in case the file somehow got corrupted. It's working so far.

 

[TheWritingGroup]

I've found far more problems in very long documents than short ones, in Word. At least a few years ago, MS was recommending keeping each chapter of a book in a separate file.

I recommend using one of the many fine non-Microsoft Word alternatives, personally.

 

[Five_Inch_Heels]

Use LibreOffice.

Erase Word.

 

[Britva415]

Web version or desktop version?

 

[theWollstonecraftWoman]

The say isn't Curses Foiled Again, it's, Cursor, Disappearing Again. Sometimes, Word can freeze, the blinking line stops blinking, you try type, and No Can Do. Despite I Can't Go For That, it's still No Can Do, but eventually, it resets, and Away We Go.

God, I'm in a strange mood today. Must be really good medicine I'm taking.

 

[Flavorfulcorpse]

Web version or desktop version?

Both, It started out web, I closed it and opened desktop and it was still doing it. As of this post I have the cursor still.

 

[Kumquatqueen]

WriterPad does that if a file is open for too long, around three hours. Closing and reopening the doc always fixes it.

 

[jsmiam]

Sounds like you tried the common solutions, but just in case not these:

Did you try settings, ease of use, text cursor

And settings, mouse, hide pointer while typing?

As a sanity check, even if you change it back afterwards, change your cursor and pointer sizes and colors. Or perhaps if you had changed it before, set back to plain black/normal.

And on the chance you have multiple monitors, try the other monitor?