Quotes and Backspace problems in Word & PowerPoint

[nulla]

The following problems are occurring on the computers in our library, using both MS Word and PowerPoint 2000 for Windows and I was wondering if anyone knew of a solution:

1-Highlighting a block of text and then hitting the backspace key does not delete the text.

2-When using quotes around text, the opening quote does not appear when you type it, until the first character following is typed in. Nor does the endquote appear when the quote key is typed, until a space is typed in afterwards.

This is particularly a big problem in our school with an entire population of learning disabled students. I have already tried adjusting typing speed in the keyboard control panel. I have also played around with turning smart quotes on and off and that does not seem to fix it. I have also tried shutting auto-correct functions on and off. I would appreciate anyone who can advise me as to what I should try next.

 

[RickSpr]

I don't know what's happening with problem 1, but problem 2 sounds like you might have a foreign language keyboard driver installed. At least if, by "quotes", you mean this character: '

Foreign language keyboards use 2-character sequences to generated characters with accents or other diacritical marks. First you hit, for example, the apostrophe, then if you hit a vowel that can have an accent over it, the accented vowel glyph is generated. If you hit another key, the apostrophe is generated, followed by the letter for the other key.

If you want to turn off the foreign keyboard, go to the Control Panel Keyboard applet.

If you have multiple language keyboards installed on purpose, you might want to turn on the keyboard language indicator in the task tray (you also do this in the Keyboard applet) so that it will be evident which keyboard language is in use. Rick Sprague