Mysterious and frustrating text behavior

[ggunn]

On a drawing I have a bunch of numbered objects. I changed the numbering scheme, so I need to change the numbers but leave them in the same positions. There are about 50 of them.

So, anyway, I am going along changing the numbers when suddenly about 1/3 of the way through my edits, it will not allow me to change them anymore. Instead of showing the text width field above the number and the three blue handles, it just shows a single square handle to the lower left of the number, and although the text field is highlighted and it seems to take the edit, when I hit escape it reverts to what it was before the edit.  Furthermore, when I go back to numbers that I was able to change before it started doing this, I can no longer change them, either.

When I go to other text in the document, the text editor behaves normally. When I create more text on the same layer, it behaves normally. Obviously I have inadvertently changed some sort of setting for just this text (all the numbers), but what is it??? When I examine a number in the properties window and compare it to text that is behaving normally, I don't see any difference.

Any ideas?

[ggunn]

PS: The layer on which the text appears is neither locked nor frozen.

[Anonymous]

Could you copy some of those text objects to a clean dwg. file and post it here?

[pendean]

Are you using a command first then selecting objects, or double-clicking and hoping AutoCAD launches what you want?

Are you edting MTEXT, TEXT, ATTRIBUTES or FIELDs? From your description alone, you are editing at least the first two types of objects. try LIST command and find out.

[ggunn]

Thanks for your responses, but I've moved on. I deleted all the numbers and started over and everything is fine; starting over was a faster path to completion than fixing the problem. If it comes up again I'll post about it, but for now discretion is the better part of valor.

[pendean]

Sometimes that is the quickest way 🙂