Sublime Forum

Cannot Type Text after Search

#1

I’ve been using Sublime for 2+ years, and in the last week Sublime keeps entering a mode I do not understand.

It is acting as if the Insert key was pressed, as the cursor turns into an underscore _. However, I cannot enter text at all. Typing any character moves the cursor as if the right arrow key was pressed. When I get to the end of the line, it wraps to the next line and continues in the same mode. I have tried a slew of strategies to end this mode here’s what works and doesn’t.

Exit Strategies:

  • Press Escape – Nope
  • Press shortcut keys (copy/paste/undo/capitalize) - Nope
  • Open Palette, try any commands – Nope
  • Restart Sublime – Fixes
  • Pressing a key - Sometimes Fixes
  • Move cursor to empty line, press a key. - Usually fixes

How It Starts

There seem to be several ways in which Sublime enters this mode. Sometimes this happens when I click in the editor, sometimes when I copy/paste. Usually it seems to happen after I press the Escape key after the end of some sequence.
One very reliable way of entering this mode is as follows:

  • Do a find with Ctrl+f Search for a word in the document.
  • Once located, press Escape. The word is now highlighted with a vertical cursor at the far right of the word.
  • Press Escape again to remove highlight.
  • The word is no longer highlighted but the cursor turns into an underscore.

Attempts to Fix

This is very frustrating, and I’ve done the following things to reset Sublime back to normal. Unfortunately, they have not worked:

  • Disabled all plug-ins via user settings – Didn’t work.
  • Ensured I’m using latest version of Sublime – Nada
  • Completely uninstalled Sublime, Removed user settings, preferences etc in C:\Users\USER\AppData\Roaming
  • Reinstalled Sublime from scratch – Still happens.
  • Installed older releases of Sublime (3174 , 3175, 3176) on top of the clean install – Still Happens

System Info:

Windows 10 Pro, Version 1709, Build 16299.431

Please Help! :slight_smile:

0 Likes
#2

Your problem sounds suspiciously like you have removed Vintage from the ignored_packages setting in your user preferences, although in that case removing your preferences should revert that back since it’s ignored by default. Did you literally delete the whole folder and start fresh?

1 Like
#3

@OdatNurd
That was exactly it! Thank you so much!!

I now see that the default preferences file has "ignored_packages": ["Vintage"] specified. I had installed several auto-complete plugins the other day and was toggling them on and off via the ignored_packages to compare their behavior. It was the first time I had used ignored_packages. After a clean install I must have assumed everything was working for a few minutes, then started giving me issues again… obviously after putting my config file back in. I had cleaned up my config file to contain "ignored_packages": [ ] which I now see is NOT the default.

This insert mode did seem a bit VI-like once I found pressing a turned it off.

Again, thanks so much!
-Voytek

1 Like