Deletions – one character at a time (Word 2000-WinNT SP6)

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A user in our firm deletes paragraphs using the delete key one character at a time – in other words she just navigates to where she wants to delete and holds down the delete button to begin her deletions. After numerous lines have been deleted the function doesn’t work any more; that is, the delete function ceases to work. And while she does know that if she selects the text and then presses the delete key all of the text she wants to get rid of will be deleted, she prefers to work by simply holding down the delete key and pressing delete and she would like an explanation of why the delete function ceases to work (I’m guessing that she’s mentally editing while doing the deletes). FYI: the document is formatted using heading styles, Alt+1, Alt+2, etc. for Headings contained within a template that we have used with no problem for more than 8 years.
After doing word counts on 2 of her deletions I realized the number of characters was approximately the same – in the vicinity of 224 – 324 – dependent on paragraph marks, etc.. So I’m thinking it has something to do with Word’s operating parameters per article Q211489 which pertains to Word 97 (but m/be it applies to Word 2000 also? A web & MS KB search did not turn up anything useful with respect to this user’s situation, and a search here at the Lounge finds post 8164 but again doesn’t seem to apply to this user’s situation.
Question(s):Does documentation exist that I have not yet located regarding this? Has anyone else encountered this issue?
As always, any input is appreciated.

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Not a specific solution, but I seem to remember that where hidden text is involved (and maybe track changes at the same time) that the ability to delete is affected when you get to the hidden text.

Try looking to see if there is any hidden text it may help. I was using word 97 so I may be barking up the wrong tree…

I seen to recall that this happened quite regularly when using a template that had instructions embedded as hidden style.

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Hi Patricia:
As Kieran said, track changes can cause this. If deleted text is marked as hidden, then it “disappears” from view, even if Tools/Options/View/Hidden text is selected. The delete key will not move past it, yet the backspace key will delete it coming from the other direction. This is true regardless of whether track changes is still on or not. Weird. The cure is to accept or reject all changes first. Hidden text that is not showing will also behave this way. I couldn’t find anything listed on the MS KB, but I didn’t look too hard.
Cheers,

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Thank you, Kieran and Phil, for replying. I will certainly check into that on Tuesday when back at work. I recall turning on the option to reveal hidden text and also Alt F9 to check for codes but did not see anything untoward. i will try your sugestion of deleting the text coming from the previous direction. Track Changes was not enabled in her document. I will report back for sure and let you know what I find.

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Just to confirm: no track changes or hidden text. I copied the document to a new screen, omitting the last paragraph mark, and the deletion problem disappeared. I’m guessing it was either corruption in the document or some codes that I found. Turns out the user brought the document into the firm from an outside source (although they said they had ‘created the document themself!!), saved it and used it as if it were a true Word document. They should have had it converted before working on it of course). I had no problem with the document on my pc at home (Win-Ofc XP) but on office network was unable to delete text after a certain point. I noticed that in each ‘delete’ case that the word count [or # characters] were almost the same (variance was paragraph characters, etc.) So . . . I guess I have to put it down to the fact that since the doc was imported from another source and contained macros/coding which caused the problem or possible corruption of the document. Any other thoughts on this?

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