# textField.selectable not working

**URL:** <https://forum.kirupa.com/t/textfield-selectable-not-working/25364>\
**Category:** flash\
**Created:** [July 11, 2003, 9:39pm UTC](https://forum.kirupa.com/t/textfield-selectable-not-working/25364 "2003-07-11T21:39:55Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 3\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![Timothy\_Hill](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/da6949/32.png) [@Timothy\_Hill](https://forum.kirupa.com/u/Timothy_Hill)\
**Post date:** [July 11, 2003, 9:39pm UTC](https://forum.kirupa.com/t/textfield-selectable-not-working/25364/1 "2003-07-11T21:39:55Z")

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This is a really basic question, and I feel like I’m probably overlooking something extremely obvious.

I’m working on a text-based application, and it’s important that users aren’t able to muck about with certain portions of it. OK, I thought, I’ll just set textField.selectable=false right after I’ve created the text field.

For some reason, though, this has no effect at all - everything’s still selectable.

What am I doing wrong here?

Thanx.

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**Author:** ![system](https://canada1.discourse-cdn.com/flex011/uploads/kirupa/original/3X/6/2/621e5c11736f46532526e61be85940af4230f3e5.png) [@system](https://forum.kirupa.com/u/system)\
**Post date:** [July 11, 2003, 9:41pm UTC](https://forum.kirupa.com/t/textfield-selectable-not-working/25364/2 "2003-07-11T21:41:48Z")

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what’s the instance name of your textField?

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![system](https://canada1.discourse-cdn.com/flex011/uploads/kirupa/original/3X/6/2/621e5c11736f46532526e61be85940af4230f3e5.png) [@system](https://forum.kirupa.com/u/system)\
**Post date:** [July 11, 2003, 9:53pm UTC](https://forum.kirupa.com/t/textfield-selectable-not-working/25364/3 "2003-07-11T21:53:33Z")

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Thanks for the quick reply. When I went back to start cutting and pasting code, though, I saw the problem was that I’d been treating “selectable” as a TextFormat property, not a TextField property.

Nyyyurghh.

Well, I DID say it was obvious …