Tip of the day: Disable Word’s annoying Overtype key

This week’s tips are exclusively for Microsoft Office users.

Sooner or later, everyone who uses Microsoft Word discovers that they’ve mysteriously shifted into a new editing mode, where positioning the insertion point in an existing block of text and then typing a few characters causes the new text to erase the existing text. The problem? You accidentally hit the Insert key, which caused Word to switch into Overtype mode instead of the default Insert mode (where newly typed text is added to existing text).

The fix is to redefine the Insert key so that it doesn’t toggle between Insert and Overtype mode. Click Tools, Customize and then click the Keyboard button to open the Customize Keyboard dialog box shown here.

From the Categories list on the left, choose All Commands. From the Commands list on the right, choose Overtype. In the Current Keys box, you’ll see that the Insert key is defined as the Overtype toggle. Select that value and then click Remove.

Click Close to save your changes, and you won’t be bothered by this annoyance on that computer again. Expert Word users will note that the change is saved in the Normal document template (Normal.dot). If you copy this file to another computer, replacing the existing Normal document template, this customization applies to all documents on the new computer as well.