Prevent Word Selection by Mouse Click

Sylvester Bullitt

I frequently insert soft hyphens into words. When when I click the desired insertion point, NPP frequently selects the entire word instead of putting the cursor at the position I wanted.

If If I go too fast and don’t notice the entire word is selected, pressing my soft-hyphen key ends up replacing the word with the soft hyphen.

Obviously, this is not the behavior I want, but I can’t find a way to stop it. Is this configurable somehow in NPP?

I have Windows 10, and have set the mouse double click speed to the maximum possible value, but no joy.

Alan Kilborn

@Sylvester-Bullitt

Stop double-clicking and just single-click??

Sylvester Bullitt

That’s the problem: I’m not double clicking. Single click only. But apparently NPP is hyper sensitive and is interpreting it as a double click.

Alan Kilborn

@Sylvester-Bullitt said in Prevent Word Selection by Mouse Click:

apparently NPP is hyper sensitive and is interpreting it as a double click.

There is no such thing as hypersensitive.
Single and double click are detected by the operating system and passed to Notepad++ as different things.
I have no further idea for you on how to solve your problem, sorry – maybe someone else?

guy038

Hello, @sylvester-bullitt, @alan-kilborn and All,

I had also these troubles when beginning to use my new Windows 10 laptop, even in applications other than Notepad++ : When I simply click on something, the system systematically supposed that I double-clicked !

So I advise you to restore the present double-click speed of your system to the default one ( value 5 )

Open the Execute window ( Window key + R )
Type in Main.cpl and hit the Enter key
Click on the first tab ( Buttons )
In the double-click speed area, choose the middle value
Valid with a click on the Apply button then on the OK button

Things should be OK again !

Best Regards,

guy038

PeterJones

@guy038 said in Prevent Word Selection by Mouse Click:

So I advise you to restore the present double-click speed of your system

He already said he tried changing that.

@Sylvester-Bullitt ,

As Alan said, determining double-click vs single-click is a function of the OS, not of the individual application. There is nothing Notepad++ can do to fix it for you.

If you really have tried setting the mouse double-click speed to every different value, and the OS misinterprets your single-click as a double-click for every speed setting: Maybe your mouse has its own custom driver software, with a second double-click-speed setting somewhere other than the default Windows OS location that Guy suggested – we cannot know where your mouse driver might have hidden settings.
If that doesn’t work or there isn’t a secondary setting, I’d recommend trying different mouse hardware, because it seems your mouse is lying to the OS.

Sylvester Bullitt

@Sylvester-Bullitt Thanks, but I already had the double-click speed cranked up to the max.

However, with the help of your comments (and those from other posterss), I think I finally discovered the root cause.

The various replies got me to wondering if the problem was outside Notepad++. I originally assumed NPP was at fault, since that was the only place I saw the symptom. But then I realized NPP was the only app where I insert characters inside text many times a day (because NPP is my only tool that lets me see the soft hyphen characters). This reminds me a little of the old adage “When all you have is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail.”

To make a long story short, I started Googling again, and stumbled across a post on another forum that hinted the problem might be hardware related. Specifically, it suggested that dirt, dust & other gunk accumulating inside the mouse might be interfering with its moving parts, causing the false double-click messages.

My mouse is corded (i.e., no way to open it, since it has no battery), but even a cursory exam of the outside showed a lot of junk filling up the outside seams, especially at the bottom of the two click buttons.

So I took needle and scraped out all the grime and crud I could see in the outside seams & re-tried the insertion point clicks. To my amazement, 99% of the problem went away! I speculate the 1% outliers are due to residual dust & dirt deep inside the mouse that I couldn’t see to remove.

So I’m going to declare victory on this issue! Thanks to all who took the time to reply. If nothing else, we came up with something that may help future troubleshooters.