[SlickRCBD]

Back with Word97 I was dismayed to find that Word did not recognize
the standard usage of the INSert key to switch between insert mode and
overwrite. When I finally got Word 2003, having skipped purchasing the
intervening versions and having limited exposure at community college,
I was elated to discover that they had added a feature to allow me to
do so.

Now I'm taking some night courses to try to get a better college
degree and I just had occasion to use Word 2007 in a lab. I haven't
been this frustrated since the time I tried Word XP and found that it
wouldn't let me format the outline using the number and letter scheme
my teacher insisted on me using and I wound up doing the thing in
Wordpad.

I digress. I've discovered that once again I can't use the INSert key
to toggle between overwrite and insert modes. The teacher for the
class I'm doing wants the papers to have a standard format and I've
created a template using that format, but the template has several
placeholders to make sure the text is formatted correctly. When I try
to use the highlight and delete method of getting rid of the text
placeholders, it often also deletes the formatting changes. In Word
2003 I'd solve this problem by switching to overwrite mode and simply
type over the placeholders.
How do I do that in Word 2007 or is it too much of a PITA to do so to
change two lines of text before switching back to insert mode?

Also, was there a way that I never learned of to be able to use the
INSERT key in Word 97 to serve the same function as it did in Word
2003?