Not too long ago a visitor to our forum was having problem deleting text in Microsoft Word. Instead of just pressing the Delete key, he had to press Ctrl + Delete. It’s a small thing, but that’s the type of problem that would slowly drive me nuts over time.
As it turned out, he had the Word Perfect options enabled. In Word Perfect, you need to confirm deletion of text. With the Word Perfect options enabled, when you highlight text and press the Delete key, it asks you if you want to delete. You can see the question if you look at the bottom of the screen in the status bar. If you say yes, it proceeds to delete the selected text. To disable the Word Perfect options, choose Tools|Options and in the General tab, remove the checkmarks next to Help for Word Perfect Users and Navigation Keys for Word Perfect Users.
Unfortunately, over the years, the Word Perfect options have caused far more grief than good. As a general rule, if something really odd is happening in Word, check and make sure the Word Perfect options haven’t been enabled by accident.