Scrolling Text Sideways

Summary: Most people use the mouse wheel to scroll their document up and down. What if it starts scrolling left and right, instead? It could be due to a number of conditions, described in this tip. (This tip works with Microsoft Word 97, Word 2000, Word 2002, Word 2003, and Word 2007.)

When Ethel scrolls using the wheel on her mouse, the text in the Word document scrolls sideways. This, of course, concerns Ethel and she wonders how to fix it.

There are a couple of possibilities to check. First, if you have the horizontal scroll bar displayed and you have the mouse pointer over that scroll bar, then the mouse wheel will scroll horizontally. The solution to this is to move the mouse pointer off of the horizontal scroll bar before moving the mouse wheel, or turn off the horizontal scroll bar entirely. (This is done on the View tab of the Options dialog box or, in Word 2007, in the Display area of the advanced Word Options dialog box.)

The other possibility is that somehow your mouse driver thinks you have a mouse that has a horizontal scrolling capability. (Some mice have this as a feature.) You should display the Mouse applet in the Control Panel and do some digging around to see if you have the right model selected for your mouse and if the settings are correct.

Tip #594 applies to Microsoft Word versions: 97 | 2000 | 2002 | 2003 | 2007

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Scrolling Text Sideways