cannot delete selected text in Office Word 2003

Hi, I am running Office Word 2003 and whenever I select some text and hit the backspace key the text is not deleted and instead the text becomes unselected. If I select text and attempt to enter something else in its place the text is not cleared and instead the entered keys appear above this selected text. What can I do to fix this extremely frustrating problem?

"The BACKSPACE key does not function as expected in Word 2003 or in Word
2002"

When you try to delete text in a document in Microsoft Word 2002 or in a later version of Microsoft Word by using the BACKSPACE key, the BACKSPACE key does not function as expected. That is, the BACKSPACE key does not delete the text.

To Solve this Change the view
In the Display for Review list, change the view to either Final Showing Markup or Original Showing Markup.

you can solve this problem by Moving the insertion point past the hidden text Use the RIGHT ARROW key or the LEFT ARROW key to move the insertion point past the hidden text. Then you can use the BACKSPACE key to delete the visible tex

you can also Turn on the "Typing replaces selection" option
The Typing replaces selection option deselects selected text as soon as you start to type. If you click to clear this check box, Word inserts the text that you type in front of selected text but does not delete the selected text. To delete the selected text, turn on the Typing replaces selection option. To do this, follow these steps:

• On the Tools menu, click Options, and then click the Edit tab.
• Click to select the Typing replaces selection check box, and then click OK.

This issue occurs when the following conditions are true.In the Word document, the Track Changes feature is turned on. The Track Changes command is on the Tools menu.On the Reviewing toolbar, either the Final view or the Original view is selected in the Display for Review list. This behavior is a feature of Word that is designed to prevent the accidental deletion of hidden text that contains tracked changes. The Final view or the Original view may contain hidden text that contains tracked changes. Additionally, this issue may occur if the Typing replaces selection option is off.

Thanks guys my problem is solved I was about to uninstall/reinstall the whole MS Office suite, plus Outlook which seems to share a number of settings with MS Office.

Thank you from

Hello all, I just now joined this forum to express my gratitude to chroma for helping me to solve this issue very quickly. Thanks, you made me a hero ;)
e-