|
DADDY BOB'S COMPUTER Q & A
June 15,
2008
Q.
All too often I press the Insert key by
mistake and overwrite text I don't want to.
How can I disable the Insert key press?
A.
This is a something that I frequently have
problems with as well. I have to look at the
keyboard while I type with mostly my two
index fingers and won't see that I am
overwriting text until it is already done.
This is a major concern to me while using
E-Mail and MS Word. So, I have figured out
how to disable the Insert Key press to
eliminate this problem.
Since the
need for the Insert key is pretty much
ancient history, disabling it will probably
have little bearing on normal activities. On
most current keyboards, this key is located
to the right of the Backspace and may be
labeled with "Ins" or 'Insert". Anyone with
big clumsy fingers like mine will often
press the Insert key by mistake when the
Backspace is intended.
To
disable the Insert key, you will have to
modify the registry by adding a sub-key.
All normal warnings
about being careful to not make the wrong
change to the Registry as it may cause you
compute to stop working should be observed.
The key is HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Keyboard
Layout The new sub-key to create is called
Scancode Map, the type is Reg_Binary and the
value to insert is hex
00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,02,00,00,00,00,00,52,e0,00.
To re-enable the Insert key press, just
delete this sub-key. A reboot will probably
be needed before these changes will take
effect.
Now, if
you are not comfortable making this
modification to the registry, you can
use a small applet I wrote to make this
change easily and safely. It can be
downloaded from the download section of this
site or by clicking
HERE.
This will disable the Insert key in almost
all areas of Windows. It will also allow
re-enabling it if desired. However,
Microsoft Word is an exception and will not
be affected by this registry modification.
So, here is how to disable it in MS word.
In MS
Word version 2007, this key is disabled by
default. However, in previous versions of
Word it is enabled by default. Changing this
functionally in Word 2007 is fairly easy,
while more involved in previous versions, so
I'll do Word 2007 first.
In Word
2007, click the Office logo at the top left
of the screen and click the Word Options
button. In the left pane, click Advanced and
then in the right pane there is the option
to "Use Insert key to control overtype
mode". You will see it is unchecked by
default. The Insert key press is controlled
by the settings here.
Now, in
versions of MSWord before 2007, Click Tools,
Customize, the Commands tab then the
Keyboard button. In the Categories section,
scroll down to "All commands" and double
click on it. In the Commands section, scroll
down to Overtype and double click on it.
This is a long list so to speed up the
scroll, you can click on any item, then
press the "O" key to jump to the start of
the O's listings. In the Current keys box,
highlight Insert and click the Remove
button. Click Close.
Should
you want to re-enable this Insert key press,
you can follow the above steps, and then
click on the Reset All button.
NOTE: I
have only checked these settings on versions
of MSWord 2000, XP2002, 2003 and 2007, but
suspect they are similar to most Windows
versions before 2000. |
