MS Outlook 2010 text selection bug - and "fix"

For quite some time now, I have been terribly frustrated using MS Outlook 2010.  It was not allowing me to select text in messages that I was reading, neither in a preview pane, now in a proper reading window.

I was only able to select text if I hit reply. In the reply email composition window I could select text.

This was frustrating.

Eventually I learned that if I hot ESCape (and possibly capslock toggle), them I could get to a mode where I could select text in a reading window.

The discussion at the following MS URL helped:

http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/office/forum/office_2010-outlook/i-cannot-highlight-text-in-microsoft-outlook-2010/7c56d72d-b163-4941-b53f-209608481eef?page=2&tm=1336417806914#footer

Helped.  Did not describe the fix precisely, although it seems that others may have followed the same path.  One poster kept asking "Does your cursor look like a hand?", and then suggested hitting ESCape.

Well, my cursor did not look like a hand. But hitting ESCape fixed the problem anyway.

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Sheesh, when I think of all the time I have wasted hitting reply to select and copy text...