What's this Word feature that I turned on accidentally?

Christine Neville

What is this feature and how's it turned on? Every time I enter a new character an another character gets deleted... or something like that. I end up turning it on accidentally about twice a year. I just want to know what I did that turns it on, and how to turn it off.

Thank you

28064212

Do you mean that if you put the cursor in the middle of a word and type, it overwrites the following text instead of inserting the new text before it? If so, press the "Ins" key on your keyboard

Mo Ghile Mear

I remember this used to happen to me occasionally.. it hasn’t happened for ages now so I forget, but it had something to do with the “insert” key .. if I touched it by accident it would do that over-typing thing. So pressing the insert key should undo the setting if that’s the cause. Might be worth a try.

CalamariFritti

The default text entering mode was changed from insert to overtype. I didnt think this would persist between sessions but what do I know.

It's somewhere in settings file/options/advanced, it's called overtype mode. Under Word for Windows simply hitting the INSsert key should toggle this, but this simple way of toggling may be turned off.

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/type-over-text-in-word-for-windows-62c15c48-0936-4902-affe-4cadd71b7038#:~:text=Turn%20on%20Overtype%20mode&text=In%20the%20Word%20Options%20dialog,Use%20overtype%20mode%20check%20box.