Mouse Stops Working in Word

Written by Allen Wyatt (last updated September 19, 2025)
This tip applies to Word 2007

Marlene notes that her touchpad and mouse do not work in Word 2007, but they do in all of her other Office 2007 programs. She has opened Word in safe mode and it showed that the OrgPlus plug-in was deactivated in safe mode, so she uninstalled OrgPlus. The touchpad and mouse still won't work, and only in Word. She also reinstalled Word, but to no avail.

It is a good thought to start Word in safe mode and disable any add-ins that could possibly be causing the problem. In this case, however, the problem seems to be with Word itself. What you are experiencing is a symptom of data key corruption in the Windows Registry. It is caused when Word does an automatic update of the program and Word was running while the program was installed and the system restarted. (Sounds like a strange confluence of events, huh? Such is the wacky, fascinating world of technical support.)

This problem is described in this Microsoft Knowledge Base article:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/940791

Interestingly enough, Microsoft includes a "let us fix it for you" link on the site, so you don't have to get your hands dirty messing in the Registry. If you prefer to edit the Registry yourself, instructions are included for that method, as well. (Editing the Registry to fix this problem is easy; you just need to delete a single data key.)

WordTips is your source for cost-effective Microsoft Word training. (Microsoft Word is the most popular word processing software in the world.) This tip (7540) applies to Microsoft Word 2007.

Author Bio

Allen Wyatt

With more than 50 non-fiction books and numerous magazine articles to his credit, Allen Wyatt is an internationally recognized author. He is president of Sharon Parq Associates, a computer and publishing services company. Learn more about Allen...

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