Deleting a selection and typing immediately causes existing text to be erased

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Level 1

9 points

Deleting a selection and typing immediately causes existing text to be erased

Hello,

I have been having this problem with Mac OS X for a long time and on multiple machines. It occurs in multiple apps and browsers, which made me think that there was some setting I had wrong, but I have been able to find nothing of use searching the internet.

When I highlight some text and delete it, the selected area stays selected, basically selecting the next set of characters. So when I continue typing, I type over that bit of select text.

For example, say I have the following selected between the brackets: The quick [brown fox] jumps over the lazy dog.

Now after I delete the text, the following text between the brackets will be selected: The quick [ jumps ov]er the lazy dog.

The expected result would be to have no text selected and the cursor simply at the the 'J' (or space before) in the word jumps.

It's incredibly annoying because I end writing over text that I still want.

Any help would be much appreciated. I'm currently running Catalina 10.15.4 on a 2015 MBP.

MacBook Pro 15", macOS 10.15

Posted on Apr 27, 2020 11:11 AM

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Answer 1

DPJ

Level 4

1,374 points

Apr 27, 2020 11:17 AM in response to danderson_j

Depending on the app being used you generally have to hit Command+Delete or Command+X to remove the text. Other apps will work fine with the Delete key by itself. It's always been that way.

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Answer 2

DPJ

Level 4

1,374 points

Apr 27, 2020 11:28 AM in response to danderson_j

"When I highlight some text and delete it, the selected area stays selected, basically selecting the next set of characters. So when I continue typing, I type over that bit of select text."

I'm only responding to what you wrote. You're having trouble selecting text and deleting them right? Or is it something else? Command+Delete works for individual words as well as lines of text. Command+X does the same thing. It cuts text. What exactly are you trying to do if this isn't it?

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Answer 3

danderson_j Author

Level 1

9 points

Apr 27, 2020 11:48 AM in response to DPJ

Maybe I'm not explaining my issue very well. Here's a little what it looks like when I run into this issue.

When I type a sentence:

"This sentence is an example sentence"

and decide to make a change, I highlight the text I don't want:

"This sentence is an example"

and press Delete, and in this case the word "sentence" is deleted. However, the selection stays and applies to the next set of characters with selection being the same length.

"This is an example"

So when I begin typing whatever I'm going to replace it with (let's "paragraph") I'll end up with

"This paragraphmple "

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Answer 4

DPJ

Level 4

1,374 points

Apr 27, 2020 11:52 AM in response to danderson_j

Thank you for the clarification. That's much clearer. I just tried that and didn't have the issue you had. Never seen this before. I've been on Macs exclusively for 25 years. Not sure if has anything to do with certain apps you have installed. Hopefully someone else will chime in if they've heard of it. Best of luck.

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Answer 5

danderson_j Author

Level 1

9 points

Apr 27, 2020 11:25 AM in response to DPJ

How do you mean? Command+Delete is for deleting entire lines of text and Command+X is for cutting. This doesn't seem help my problem.

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Deleting a selection and typing immediately causes existing text to be erased

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