Normally, when editing Microsoft Word 2003 documents, if you select text and start typing, the selected text will be overwritten with the text you type. This saves a step in that if you need to replace text, you don’t need to press the Delete key after selecting the text before entering the replacement.
Unfortunately, text replacement can cause problems if you selected the text by accident. Huge portions of your document could suddenly disappear if you select text and start typing; this can often happen when using a pressure-sensitive touchpad commonly found on many laptops. Thus, this behavior can be changed so that when text is selected, what you type appears before the selected text.
1. Select “Tools” – “Options”.
2. When the “Options” multi-tabbed dialog box appears, click the “Edit” tab.
3. Uncheck “Typing replaces selection”.
4. Click “OK” to close the dialog box.