Changed appearance of cursor when editing in formula bar

[goneps]

Excel 2003, Win7 Home SP1

I always edit cells via the formula bar, not directly in the cell. For some reason the appearance of the cursor has suddenly changed from a thin vertical line to a much thicker one, which is unhelpful and distracting.

When the formula bar is first opened for entry or editing the cursor appears as the normal thin line, and remains thus if the cursor is moved either by mouse or arrow keys:

Excel cursor normal.PNG

But as soon as any other key is pressed to begin entry or editing it changes to the thicker line:

Excel cursor wide.PNG

As you can see, it's similar to when the Insert keyboard function is selected (but that's not the case). This occurs in some, but not all, of my workbooks. The problem first arose many years ago but I can't recall how it was resolved.

Can anyone please tell me how to remedy this annoying behaviour? And preferably how it might have occurred in the first place.

Many thanks,

Richard

[TMS]

Cross posted: https://forum.ozgrid.com/forum/index...n-formula-bar/

[goneps]

Yes, should have mentioned that, but there has been no response after several weeks. Nor from same post on Excel Guru forum.

Surely someone knows the answer to this?

[TRICKYT57]

It looks the effect you get if you hold down the shift key and hit the right arrow once. It might be:
1) Your shift key is stuck or faulty
2) You have a second device connected (e.g. a second bluetooth mouse or a track pad). Something is touching the second device causing a click or shift-right action.
3)In Settings, keyboard, text do you have any "Replace text" "With" which adds a space to certain words or to a space itself?
4) Do you have any excel macro or keyboard macro type programs running which could be doing this?

[goneps]

Thanks TRICKYT57.

1. Shift key is working perfectly for other workbooks and all other programmes.
2. There are no second devices connected and everything is wired on this desktop PC, ie. no wireless devices present.
3. No Settings > Keyboard on this vintage version of Excel, but have checked Replace Text options and nothing there. As I mentioned, it affects only some workbooks and not others.
4. There are no macros on this workbook?all sheets are just plain text lists. I have lots of macros attached to other workbooks, but haven't edited any or written a new one for years.

I tried changing Options to Edit Directly in Cell. The cursor behaves normally in the cell, but still displays the aberrant behaviour if I click on the formula bar and edit there instead.

Thanks for trying to help solve this maddening glitch.

[LeoSkywalker]

Please upload one of the problematic files, so that we can try to replicate the glitch you're experienciencing, to corroborate it's got something to do with the file and Excel, and not with something else in your environment.

[goneps]

Sorry, but I'm searching in vain for how to upload a file.

[TMS]

Fast answers need visual help. Please read the yellow banner at the top of this page on how to attach a file.

[goneps]

And the eyes of the blind shall be opened. Thanks TMS. May I further impose on you to advise how to stop the site
logging me out so often?

File attached, I hope. As I said, just a plain text list, but the problem also affects the other three workbooks
I have open at present. I'm sure this was not the case earlier today. On one occasion I noticed that the cursor
didn't change on cells with formulas, but now it's doing so on all cells regardless of content.

Closing and restarting Excel makes no difference, neither does rebooting the PC.

[TMS]

Not a problem for me. However, if you press shift and right or left arrow, it will appear to be a wide i-bar. Myabe that's what you are doing.

[goneps]

No, it's not what I'm doing, but if I do it merely highlights the respective character, which is what you'd expect.

What I'm experiencing is a wide insertion point between the characters, as shown in the first post.

Site has logged me out again in less than half an hour. How do I stop this annoyance, please?

[TMS]

Site has logged me out again in less than half an hour. How do I stop this annoyance, please?

There is a little box under your login details. Click on that.

[goneps]

An update. Miraculously the problem appears to have fixed itself. It seems likely that the same happened last time (many years ago), which would explain why I have no notes about it.

Just in case it's of any interest, during the aberrant cursor behaviour there was another oddity in that, when editing a cell, the PC would "ding" every time the Alt key was pressed with Ctrl held down. This, too, has ceased.

Thanks again to those who offered help.