I'm trawling through a long piece of footage waiting for the soundbite I need and it would be nice to be able to check my email or browse the news as I do so, but I can't because FCP stops working if you don't give it your full attention.

It's particularly irritating when recording a voice over as it means I can't read it from a Word document, I have to put it on a usb, leave my place, find an internet cafe and print it out.

Is this a setting I can change?

Unfortunately, no. Get a second monitor if you do a lot of voice over work.

Thanks for the clarification.

At the moment it's cheaper to print out the voiceovers.