Disabling The Nuisance Insert Key

What is the Insert Key and how can it be turned off?

One of the must-watch TV shows from my childhood was The Monkees; the completely madcap adventures of a pop group comprising three Americans and a young Englishman. The main piece of trivia associated with the show (apart from the fact that most of the backing tracks on the Monkees albums were not played by the Monkees at all, but by a band called Candy Store Prophets) was that the mother of guitarist Mike Nesmith (the one in the hat) invented correction fluid and it is a genuine rags-to-riches story.

Just after World War Two Bette Nesmith Graham was a single mother who was employed as a typist, but she was also something of an artist. She knew that artists often painted over their mistakes and so she figured it must be possible to develop a type of paint to mask typing errors. She experimented at home, mixing her concoctions in a food blender, and her early efforts were soon in demand in the office where she worked. She set up a cottage industry, making and selling her product, which was originally called Mistake Out, but which she later renamed Liquid Paper. That cottage industry boomed and not long before her death in 1980, she sold the company for 47.5 million dollars.

And it was probably the perfect time to sell, for as the eighties advanced the typewriter became an endangered species, driven out by the unstoppable march of the far more efficient word processor. Sales of correction fluid plummeted as on-screen editing became the norm. The typewriter had come up against a rival it simply could not fight off and, just as CDs all but put an end to vinyl records and the arrival of the tea bag caused mass redundancies among the nation's tealeaf readers, the old Remmington was consigned to the attic, another victim of progress.

Those who jumped ship from mechanical to electronic typing found the changeover fairly easy to deal with. The keyboard set up was pretty much the same and it was simply a matter of typing onto a screen rather than paper. But diving straight into something new because the basic functions are easy to perform is perhaps not the best route as there are always hidden glitches that could pop up, so some form of proper grounding is the best way forward.

A good example that has perplexed many a novice is the Overtype function. Our novice may have familiarised himself with the basics of Word and can type away quite merrily, but then one day it happens. He returns to a paragraph he has already typed to insert some text he missed out (say, putting the word 'Wednesday' after 'Sheffield'). He has done this many times before so he positions the cursor in the required place and types. Instead of pushing the existing type along as he had expected, however, he is aghast to see that the fresh typing is actually deleting the existing text as he types. Thinking, and hoping, that this was some sort of one-off glitch, he continues, re-typing the text that has just been deleted. No joy; the cursor continues to gobble up his copy like Pacman.

What he has done is press the Insert key by accident. This puts the cursor into Overtype mode and, as the name suggests, anything typed in the middle of existing text will delete that text as it goes. The solution is simplicity itself; he has to press the Insert key again and his typing will push the existing text along like before, but as our novice does not know this, he is flummoxed. When the Overtype function is activated the letters OVR are highlighted in a box on the status bar at the bottom of the screen, so it is possible to tell what will happen to existing text before you type in the middle of it.

I have to say that in many years of using Word I have never had occasion to use the Overtype function and that key was quite redundant, apart from occasional accidental strikes. Then I discovered that it is possible to change the function of the Insert key quite easily, and transform it into a Paste button that will perform the same task as pressing Ctrl + V. To do this in pre-2007 versions of Word, go to Tools/Options and click on the Edit tab. Check the Use INS Key For Paste box then click OK.

For Word 2007 go to Office/Word Options and click Advanced. Scroll down to Cut, Copy and Paste. Check the Use Insert Key for Paste box. And click OK.

And there you have it; a paste shortcut and no more overtype confusion. Bear in mind, however, that if you do change the function of the Insert key, any unintended strikes of it will dump the contents of the clipboard into your document, although this is easily dealt with by clicking Undo.