(no subject)

[scarfman]

The latest Windows 10 update pisses me off.

I like to hold the shift key down while I'm moving the cursor a long distance, to highlight/select what I'm moving past, to better track the cursor's progress. A few weeks or months ago, in Excel and Word, I noticed that, when I did that and then deselected, the cursor reverts to where it began, rendering my reflexive habit useless. For awhile I was giving the issue insufficient articulate thought to realize this started more recently than when I first downloaded this version of Office because it wasn't bugging me that much because I don't navigate in Office programs that way a lot. But in retrospect it must have only started a few weeks or months ago, at the time I first noticed it, with one of MicroSoft's updates for the program.

Because, as of the last Windows 10 update, this has been happening in Notepad. Where I spend most of my time.

Comments

[sabremeister]

Sounds like it's time to switch to OpenOffice

[scarfman]

How is it a program issue when it's now also happening in Notepad? Isn't it an OS issue? Would switching to Open Office correct an OS issue?

[sabremeister]

It probably wouldn't do anything about the problem in Notepad, but it would at least bypass the problem in Word and Excel. I suspect you (and a million others) would have to make a complaint to M$ and wait for a future update to Win10 to get the problem actually fixed.

[pedanther]

It could be a program issue since Word, Excel, and Notepad are all made by Microsoft. If that's the case, the issue would presumably have a chance of not existing in a program that's not made by Microsoft.

I have Windows 10 and Open Office (or, strictly speaking, Libre Office, which is like Open Office only more so), so I could experiment and find out if it has the same issue. Only I haven't been able to establish a baseline yet by reproducing the issue in Word, Notepad, or Excel; when you speak of deselecting the text, what actually are you doing?

[scarfman]

Usually I just let go the shift key and continue hitting the up or down arrow key. When I do this in Word or Excel, now, releasing the shift key puts the cursor back where I started. In Notepad the result varies according to some algorithm/criteria I haven't worked out, now, when up til last week the cursor would continue from its new location.

[pedanther]

Hmm. I don't seem to be able to reproduce this behaviour. When I try it, letting go of the shift key does nothing in itself, and where the cursor goes after that depends on which key I press next. Pressing up or left moves the cursor back from the upper end of the selected area, pressing down or right moves the cursor on from the lower end of the selected area. (Regardless of which end of the selected area was the end I started selecting from.)

[scarfman]

In Notepad it may have something to do with which way the cursor is moving? I noticed in the past few days that it happened in an instance when I moved down a few lines highlighting, and then moved left within the same line still highlighting, and when I released the shift key I was now moving left in the top line I'd partially highlighted. I tried it several times and it happened each time, releasing the highlighting while the cursor was moving moved the cursor to the end of the highlighting that the cursor was moving toward. I think this is the same thing, or subject to being caused by the same programmed algorithm, you describe here.