Would one of you folks running Word 2019 do me a favor? Open a Word document and pretend that you're going to record a macro, i.e., click on "Record Macro", type a name for the pretend macro into the dialog box that pops up (or just leave the default name, "macroxx", whatever) and tell me what your cursor looks like at that point? Sounds stupid I know, but humor me ...

Reason is, when I hit "Record Macro", my cursor becomes a little square sad-face with an upward pointing arrow; I interpreted this to mean that the macro recording function had failed, and so launched a VERY frustrating search for the cause of the malfunction (some of which is documented above) ... but, mirabile dictu!, that wasn't the case - further testing (and swearing, and weeping) showed that the macro recorded just fine. I know, I know ... I'm an idiot. Either I've never noticed this before (a circumstance I deem highly unlikely), or some four-eyed coding geek at Microsoft got bored one afternoon and decided to have a little fun with the hoi polloi.

Anyway, I would be interested to know if anyone else has experienced this.