Apache OpenOffice Community Forum

I'm referring to the feature that causes you to have to re-type an entire sentence when you go back to make a correction. I know, that makes no sense. Here's what I mean:

I type a sentence, then I notice I misspelled a word or want to change a word(s). I put the cursor with in the sentence, type the new word and it overlaps the word after it. It just deletes them and I have to re-type the whole sentence, even hitting the space bar causes them to be deleted. It seems to turn it's self on automatically.

It's really annoying and for the life of me I can't figure out how to disable it and I really need it gone. Writing about Friedrich Nietzsche requires a lot of revision and correction and I really hate having to re-type entire sentences.

Thanks.

You hit the insert button (if you still have that on your keyboard) or you accidentally clicked the INS/OVR in the status bar. With that you're in overwrite mode and everything you type replaces existing text. Remedy is: repeat that action.

If your problem has been solved, please edit the first post of this thread (Edit button) and add [Solved] to the start of the subject line. You can also change the subject line so that other people can more easily find this thread when they have the same problem as you. For instance: How to stop new text from overwriting existing text?

That worked! Thank you so much, I think I did hit the Insert button.

WOW! Just realized I said "Who", not How. I need a break, been typing for 4 hours.

I am using MS word with Vista and am having the overwriting problem too. The Insert key is not the cause (I have tried that several times) and I cannot see OVR appearing anywhere on the screen with the word doc. Is there anything else that causes text to overwrite? Any help greatly appreciated!

yay it worked! thank you. Thought I would post because I am using Windows 7.

busybee wrote:I am using MS word with Vista and am having the overwriting problem too. The Insert key is not the cause (I have tried that several times) and I cannot see OVR appearing anywhere on the screen with the word doc. Is there anything else that causes text to overwrite? Any help greatly appreciated!

Pressing the Insert Key should sort out the problem. OpenOffice 2.3.X is a very old version - you should change to the latest, OO 4.1.1, downloading only from
http://www.openoffice.org/download
This will transfer you to a SourceForge server and your download will start automatically in 5 - 10 seconds. Do not click on anything else. You can verify the downloaded file by the methods described in
Apache OpenOffice - How to verify the integrity of the downloaded file?

I'm hoping that the poster you were replying to, Rory, namely busybee, found a solution on their own, as their post is over 6 years old.

I hadn't noticed the posting date - I had just observed that it was not replied to when I approved the post after it. However, the information in my post is still valid.

I do not have an insert button on my keyboard, so it must've been a keystroke command that I mistakenly entered. How do I get it back into the vertical line instead of the flashing box that replaces text?

On the OO Status Bar (bottom bar of OO window) in the centre you should see a box saying OVR or INSRT (in your case, OVR) click on this and it will change to INSRT and all should now be well. If the Status Bar is not showing on your OO you enable it by selecting /View /Status Bar.

I cannot say what combination of keys on a Mac keyboard is used to activate the keyboard Insert key, but I am certain there must be one.

From Google: Fn + m = Insert

Thank you! I had never noticed that before...

nancyuen wrote:I do not have an insert button on my keyboard

Apple's software doesn't use the Insert key, so Macs don't have one.

nancyuen wrote:How do I get it back into the vertical line instead of the flashing box that replaces text?

See Help → Index → insert mode for entering text which tells you to click the insertion mode (INSRT or OVER) area of the status bar. It's your only option given that you have no Insert key.

Bill wrote:From Google: Fn + m = Insert

Did you test that? I did. On my Mac, Fn+m types an "m", as if Fn was not pressed. I know of no simple way to simulate an Insert key which works on all Mac models. One can install non-Apple software to toggle insertion mode on a Mac keyboard. I've not done that and can't advise about that but a web search will find sources.

Sorry, I quoted the excerpt that came up after a search without reading the full article and missed that it only works for Windows on a Mac.