Ghostly Text Boxes???

**harcon** · 01-21-2011, 06:56 PM

I am fairly experience with Excel but this has me stumped. I have a bunch of what appear to be text boxes sprinkled on top of a bunch of cells. When I put the cursor on the cell, I can't edit the cells without getting rid of the text boxes. The text boxes (if that is what they are) are borderless and have no content so they only appear when I put the cursor over them. They "highlight" and I can drag them to an empty cell, but then when I hit "Clear--All" they delete but then when I put the cursor back where I first found them they are once again there. What are they, how did I put them there, and how do I delete them so i can edit the cell under them?

Thanks, in advance, for any tip.

Harry Allen

**MarvinP** · 01-21-2011, 07:36 PM

Hi harcon and welcome to the forum,

Look for validation list boxes and see if that isn't what you are seeing. You might also have a thing called "Shapes" on your sheet and need to delete them

**Marcol** · 01-21-2011, 07:53 PM

Did you copy your sheet from a web page?

If so copied shapes could well be the problem, as Marvin suggests.

Open the VBa editor (Alt+f11)
In the immediate pane type this

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Press Enter

If a number other than 0 appears in the line below this code, and you know you have no controls on this sheet

Paste this in a standard module

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Then run the macro.

If you have known controls on the sheet this will have to be qualified.

**Cutter** · 01-21-2011, 08:49 PM

You could also try this:

Hit F5 (or Ctrl+G) to bring up the Go To dialog box
Click on Special button
Click on Objects option
Click OK

This will select all objects on the sheet.
If there are no objects on the sheet that you want to keep then you can hit Delete key while everything is selected.
Don't do that if you have any objects you want to keep.