Highlight and backspace doesn’t work – Microsoft Word

My roommate just had this problem with Microsoft Word 2003, and I found the fix using the Google search engine. Here’s what you do:

Tools -> Options -> Edit
Check “Typing Replaces Selection”

That’s all my roommate had to do. For the sake of completeness, the fix also says:

Tools -> Options -> General
Uncheck both options that have WordPerfect in them

Hope this helps someone.

197 Responses to “Highlight and backspace doesn’t work – Microsoft Word”

  1. Claire says:

    Thanks, was having this problem and just googled it. Yours was the first result displayed …. and it worked

  2. Mohsin says:

    Thanks! I’m an IT professional, and I still didn’t know how to do this. I just hate the fact that there are so many hidden options like this in MS word (when I say hidden, I mean they are there, but you just have no idea where to find it cause it’s not intuitive).

    Cheers.

  3. Michael says:

    Thank you very much for a concise and helpful post! Don’t know how I managed to uncheck that option, but your explanation saved me quite the headache.

    Take good care.

  4. dom says:

    this problem randomly started on my office pc one day then spread to my own machine when i emailed docs home!

    thanks for the easy fix.

  5. r says:

    Thanks!
    That was a real frustrating couple days!

  6. D says:

    Thanks very much – this really helped!

  7. Damian says:

    I know my way around a computer, – but this is a problem I came across that was constantly annoying until I decided to do something about it and search the internet! – Thanks for sharing this!!!!!

  8. MC says:

    Thanks for the fix — what a horrible hidden option!

  9. S.N says:

    thxx a million, I gave up to solve it.. and now you maid my rainy day sunny again.. thxx

  10. Jason says:

    wow. thank you so much. on my previous computer i lived for like two years with it and never figured it out. it just started about 5minutes ago on my laptop and i was freaking out….thanks for the quick fix =)

  11. Javier says:

    I love you! Whoever you are! I had this problem with me during the last 2 months. It was driving me crazy!!

    thank u!

  12. jessica says:

    thankyou so much! i’m uni student with an assignment due soon and no time to hold down a backspace key!! thankyou =)

  13. Felix says:

    Thank you for that tip! That was making me insane for the last two weeks, and I was considering getting a new keyboard!

  14. Andrei Zimin says:

    Thanks, man! You really helped!

  15. missy says:

    Wow, you just made my day. Thank you so much!!

  16. Mikaela says:

    Thank you sooo much. this has been happening to me soo much and i was sick of doing so many uni assignments and not getting anywhere. i didnt think it was such a thing but i googled it anyway and there was our response. thanks soooo much!

  17. Kidofthethird says:

    like everyone else said, thanks.

  18. Puneet says:

    OOOOOOOOOMMMMMMGGGGG Finaly thank god i found u lol thnx so much u have no idea how much u helped meeeeeee :)

  19. jen says:

    i thought i was going extra-crazy, as my brain is already addled by some wicked allergies…i was asking coworkers “hey…you can like, highlight a selection of text and press backspace and it deletes it all, right? right??”

    i can’t believe it actually took me a week to google it.

    thank you!

  20. Miranda Strucke says:

    Oh my god! I somehow turned this option off while writing an essay last night. Today when I went to type up some stuff I was going crazy, it is so annoying to not be able to use that option. Thank you so much for your post!!!!!!!

  21. Travis says:

    Yes!!! I don’t have to destroy my computer after all!! I tried to ignore it but insanity was taking over. So I googled it and this savior blog popped up and, lllaaah!! (shining light onto monitor)

  22. Jenson Mathew says:

    Dude, thank you so much. I use backspace so much when I want to delete my text and when this problem occurred I was so conscientious of that. It’s so much easier for me to just backspace text than highlighting and pressing the delete key. Unlike random blogs that had complicated and superfluous instructions this was very straight forward. Thank you!

  23. luke says:

    THANKS SOOOO MUCH

  24. Crimsn says:

    Thanks so much! I have no idea how that box got unchecked but it’s been driving me insane for days! You are wonderful.

  25. Regan says:

    Thanks heaps for this. It was literaly driving me UP the wall!
    Thanks again

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