Excel is spontaneously switching files\workbooks

Check whether that workbook is having any VBA event code.

Hi Rob,

After testing computer software professionally for many years, I have to admit you are a trusting soul. Windows passes it's interrupts around asking if any of the currently running programs needs to use the CPU, memory or other stuff. You have lots of "normal" programs open that you can see and trust. How about programs in memory that are waiting to be serviced, like antivirus programs or speech recognition or some add-in in one of your browsers.

Check your Task Manager to see the list of other programs that might be doing you dirt. Start eliminating some of these, in the task manager, by closing them to see if you can pick out the one (or combinations) that are giving you this problem.

Thanks for the responses. According to the task manager there are no programs or services waiting to be serviced. No antivirus programs or speech recognition or some add-in in one of my browsers. I use very few add-ins as I do not like how they impact the browsers (most are more trouble than they are worth). I do use adblocker, LastPass and WOT. Are you suggesting leaving them off for a day and see if the problem occurs? Why would this make Excel jump to another workbook that is minimized? Frankly I am baffled.

I do such a high volume of work every hour that it is a huge negative to shut programs down and bring them up again the 10-70 times each day that I access them. I do shut many down overnight to allow Karen's replicator to back them up (and then spend 15-20 minutes getting everything back up every morning & positioned on one of the monitors for easy visibility).

As for VBA, there are no macros and I never play with VBA. I do run some security programs and never record account numbers, passwords or anything sensitive in a spreadsheet (only in encrypted files using a program). So how do I check for any rogue VBAs? Google could not tell me anything and Help is uninformative as usual. It happens on various workbooks, event he really simple ones for a shopping list.

Thanks.

Rob

Here is a long shot. If you have preview enabled in Windows Explorer and the file that is causing problems is selected in Windows Explorer, sudden freezes of Excel can occur. Pressing enter has had various results including being taken to Windows Explorer to open a file, have the File Open dialogue appear, have the Hyperlink dialogue appear and this happened before I had any add-ins or macros installed on 3 different computers running Windows 7 and Excel 2010.

Once I close the preview window in Windows Explorer, everything returns to normal.