Scrolling Text Sideways

Written by Allen Wyatt (last updated August 28, 2021)
This tip applies to Word 97, 2000, 2002, and 2003

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.)

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.

WordTips is your source for cost-effective Microsoft Word training. (Microsoft Word is the most popular word processing software in the world.) This tip (594) applies to Microsoft Word 97, 2000, 2002, and 2003.

Author Bio

Allen Wyatt

With more than 50 non-fiction books and numerous magazine articles to his credit, Allen Wyatt is an internationally recognized author. He is president of Sharon Parq Associates, a computer and publishing services company. Learn more about Allen...

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