There are lots of reasons to be annoyed with Word. I’ve just discovered another one.
Look at the screenshot above. It shows two open documents in Word. Which one is the active window? (too small? You can see the full size image.)
Trick question. Neither is active. Even though these are the only two documents open in Word, neither is active. Keystrokes will not be sent to either one. Note how the title bar of the left window makes it appear to be active, while the scroll bar of the right window suggests it is active.
This condition arises erratically when the command-` systemwide shortcut is used to cycle through the windows of the current app. It only seems to happen when windows of other apps are also visible. I’m working on a job where I’m copying timecodes from the left window into the right, and the fact that I can’t use command-` to cycle is slowing me down measurably—almost as much as taking time out to blog about the problem is doing.