I have not been one to complain about Windows Vista and, until recently, I have generally been happy with my experience. Suddenly, my mouse quit working within Word 2007 although it worked perfectly in all other programs. Now this may not be a big issue for people who use hot-key shortcuts, but I use my mouse all of the time. Further, I am not about to start retraining myself just because Vista does not want to play well with Word 2007. By the way, both are Microsoft products.
A quick Google search brought me to a Vista Forums discussion about this issue. Apparently, this is a wide-spread problem that has not been addressed by Microsoft. On this one forum there were at least 5 separate discussions. My Google search also found a number of other forums in which this problem is discussed. I quickly found several suggestions about how to fix the issue. I tried one which simply advised me to go into the control panel and make a couple of selections in the mouse control. This did not work.
Then I was left with two suggestions which appeared to be applicable, but both scared me because I had to use the Registry Editor tool. In the distant past, I have done some real harm to my computers using the Registry Editor and I have been slow to use that tool again. However, based on the number of entries I saw making the same recommendation, I took a deep breath and deleted a registry entry per the recommendation. So far, so good. The change has worked. I can now use my mouse in Word 2007 and start writing again.
Okay, so the Regedit worked this time, but I do question why I should have to start playing with a tool that could crash my system if I delete the wrong key. I should not have to make these changes to simply get my mouse to work. I did not want to use the regedit tool, I don’t recommend that you do so unless you are an advanced user, and I would highly recommend that you do appropriate backups if you go down this road.
Finally, if you are also having this problem, go to Vista Forums for ideas and solutions. But before you begin editing your registry, make the backup, and complain to Microsoft.
