I am a 63 year old ignoramus running a Pentium 100 + Windows 95, using Word 6.0. Whenever I highlight a letter or block in Word and hit the <Delete> key, it asks: "Delete block? yes/no". I find this a chore, as it causes lots of unnecessary keystrokes when I am tidying up my memoirs or Family Tree; because if I want to delete something, I want to delete it and don't expect to be third-degreed. After all, if I accidentally hit the <Delete> key, I always have the Undo function.
I have asked all the young Windows 95 experts at work how to remove this default. Most have heard of it, but can't remember how to remove it. I realise this is a petty question with a simple solution, but I would appreciate it if you could spare a few seconds to reply.
- John Ferguson
I am 27 years old. I got access to my first computer at the age of 13, did computer studies at school, went on to study Computer Science at university and since then I have worked in a variety of computer related jobs. Until your posting I had never solved the delete block problem in Word 6.0. This is despite encountering your problem several times in the past. It is hard to find the option to turn it off as it is part of a set of options.
The reason why it queries you during deletion is because Word 6.0's Help for WordPerfect Users is activated. This is often innocently activated during installation by someone who does not know what they have let themselves in for. What this "help" does is firstly to display a dialogue box whenever a former WordPerfect user presses a WordPerfect hot-key telling them how they could perform that same operation in Word, and secondly to mimic certain WordPerfect methods, eg the prompt where you are asked if you really want something deleted.
To deactivate these, select Options from the Tools menu. Choose the General tab. Uncheck the Navigation keys for WordPerfect users and you will be prompted during deletion no more. Also you may want to uncheck Help for WordPerfect users to remove the prompting dialogue boxes.
- Roy Chambers
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Category: Word processing
Issue: Mar 1997
Pages: 163-164
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When I say delete I mean delete!