Outlook 2007 – how to disable the Hand cursor
How to disable or turn off the Panning Hand cursor in Outlook 2007
If you’re using Outlook 2007 and you have a mysterious “Panning hand” cursor that won’t let you select text in an email, and want to turn it off, but can’t find the option, here’s how:
- Click the Customize Quick Access Toolbar pull down:
- Choose “More Commands…”
- In the next window, click the drop down box and choose “Commands not in the Ribbon”
- Scroll down until you find “Panning Hand” and then click “Add >>”
- Click OK.
- The Hand will now appear in the toolbar.
- Click the Hand to disable Panning Hand
- You can now select/copy/highlight text
Did it work? Leave a comment! 
Chris said,
23 October, 2008 at 7:45 pm
Thank you so much – this has been driving me nuts!
Max said,
7 November, 2008 at 11:50 pm
Many thanks!
Any idea how it gets enabled in the first place (shortcut key, maybe)?
(I don’t have a Quick Access Toolbar, nor any way to enable it, and I can’t find any mention of a “panning hand” in the Help file.)
Phil Wiffen said,
8 November, 2008 at 9:17 am
Hey Max,
I wish I knew – it’d certainly be easier to undo!
(This mysteriously got enabled on a co-worker’s laptop and I was just asked to fix it)
Tran said,
8 January, 2009 at 7:01 pm
to get to the Quick Access toolbar, click on any of the email message in the Inbox to open the message. A new window will appear with the Quick Access toolbar on the top left corner. Then follow the instruction in message 1 above.
Scott Riggs said,
26 January, 2009 at 11:01 pm
Fixed worked perfectly, just wish I knew why it started!
jASON said,
23 February, 2009 at 1:47 am
Thanks for the directions. This has been irritating. Followed your directions – then DISCOVERED that there is a panning hand icon on the Preview Pane. Check the ICON right above the Vertical SCROLL bar – on my copy there is a panning hand icon to toggle panning on and off. Gawd – the difference between ON and off is ridiculously NON obvious!
Miguel A. Garces said,
23 February, 2009 at 6:07 am
This just happened to me. You most likely accidently clicked on it as I did since it appears on every message and on the preview window. Look at the top right of the body window, above the scroll, if your message has one. There it is … the pan hand toggle.
Phil – thanks for the info – do you know how to disable it from there?
Michael Montgomery said,
20 March, 2009 at 1:49 pm
Thanks, I looked in a lot of places to turn this off. I don’t know if I accidentally turned it on (I “discovered” the palming hand icon at the top of the vertical scroll bar through reading the above comments) or if IT somehow turned it on with one of their “helpful” upgrades.
David said,
20 May, 2009 at 2:12 am
Thank you! This worked great.
Cheers
D
Dom said,
28 May, 2009 at 9:26 am
That worked a treat! Was getting really frustrated with that – how annoying!
Many thanks.
Omega said,
16 June, 2009 at 11:00 pm
Thanks a lot!!! Copy&Paste was becoming a nightmare!!!
Omega said,
16 June, 2009 at 11:28 pm
Update:
You can enable/disable this feature by clicking on the little hand above message scroll bar.
Phil Wiffen said,
17 June, 2009 at 10:08 am
I’d seen that solution elsewhere, too. However, on the PC I was working on, it didn’t have that little hand icon above the message scroll bar :/
Bill Quist said,
1 July, 2009 at 11:04 pm
Thanks, Looking through the comments, I found where that hand is on the inbox. I often copy text from my inbox, and was getting frustrated.
Terry O'Donnell said,
6 July, 2009 at 2:52 pm
Great fix, I was getting demented with frustration. Thank you.
Tim Stanley said,
10 July, 2009 at 1:13 pm
Extremely helpful, this was driving me nuts. Thank you.
Lisa said,
24 July, 2009 at 9:22 pm
Thanks so much! This was driving me NuTS too!! I have no idea how it was enabled in the first place.
Murali said,
31 July, 2009 at 8:51 pm
Thanks a lot. It was driving me crazy as well.
DJ said,
4 August, 2009 at 3:04 pm
Perfect. Thank you
Mary Travers said,
4 August, 2009 at 6:24 pm
Very helpful, I’m so glad it could be sorted. Many thanks
Don Brunder said,
28 August, 2009 at 3:51 pm
This article got me started on solving this pesky problem. In my Outlook 2007 there is a “Turn on/off Panning Hand” icon (a hand of course) at the top right of the preview and reading text panes.
Zoe DJ said,
18 September, 2009 at 1:07 am
Phil you are genious!! After months of frustration and forwarding emails to my private e-mail just to be able to copy and paste important text … argghh!
This problem (not to mention finding the right words to describe the problem to find an answer) is finally, amazingly gone!!
Thanks to everyone else too for discovering and pointing out where the problem started … if only I’d have thought about looking around my screen for the pesky little hand icon to be able to get rid of it!!
One thousand thanks Zoe DJ
Dan B said,
23 September, 2009 at 11:25 pm
Ok I did and it did not work. I also cannot find it on the scroll bar
Someone at microsoft needs fired
help help
Kim said,
30 October, 2009 at 4:30 pm
It worked!!! Thank you!
susan said,
4 November, 2009 at 10:53 pm
THANKYOU!!!
YOU ARE BRILLIANT!!!
Ayeshna said,
6 November, 2009 at 10:24 am
Great – worked straightaway. I’ve spent ages trying to figure out why it suddenly started in the first place! – still clueless.
Thanks for your tip!
Joe said,
21 November, 2009 at 3:32 am
I’ll chime in with the ‘driving me nuts’ comments. Infuriating that MS had this absurdly disabling option (who the heck DOESN’T want to select text in an email every once in while?) so non-intuitively able to turn off once it gets turned on somehow (me, too, not knowing how ti got turned on months ago.. every time I would try to select text, I’d be infuriated, but would just manually copy the data. Only reason I Googled it now was because I had to copy a very complex code out of the email).
Thanks! You link was the top link for Google when I entered in the search terms:
“Microsoft Outlook 2007 get rid of hand”
Blake Schreck said,
9 January, 2010 at 3:52 pm
Thanks so much…its been driving me cazy. (or more crazy)
Suzanne said,
20 January, 2010 at 2:00 am
Thanks so much, Phil! Glad I Googled this problem and came up with your answer. This appeared when a friend of mine was using my computer, and I’ve suffered with it for weeks. Now that I know how to fix it, I ought to enable the Panning Hand when he uses my computer again just to annoy him…”Well, it doesn’t happen when I use the computer”…blah, blah, blah! Thanks again! P.S. I’ve added your site to my Favorites as I’m sure I’ll be back.
Rod said,
22 January, 2010 at 3:43 am
Thanks much! I am very curious how, after years of using Outlook, and about 18 months in Vista, all of a sudden this happened. What caused the problem to which your solution was clearly they answer?
Donna said,
10 February, 2010 at 3:35 am
Thank you SO much! This has been driving me absolutely crazy! Maybe I’ll get my sanity back now !
Dan said,
1 March, 2010 at 11:46 pm
Thank you!
Paul said,
2 March, 2010 at 6:00 am
GOOD GRIEF, Thanks for figuring this out!
Lam Nguyen said,
8 April, 2010 at 3:57 am
Great!
Thanks so much for your instruction!
Cheers!
N.T.Lam
Larry said,
28 April, 2010 at 4:04 pm
Thanks a million!!!!!!!!!
It is so clear and easy. I am so glad to found this help!
Good Job
aubrey said,
17 May, 2010 at 11:08 pm
Thanks much. This has been a real thorn in my side.
You solved the issue and stress.
D H said,
8 June, 2010 at 10:07 pm
Sport on and Fantastic, thank you very much.
Easy when you know how. Why do MS do this weird stuff?