Problem when selecting a single cell, is it a bug or is it me?

**nje** · 07-10-2012, 09:32 AM

Sorry if this isn't the correct part of the forum to put this in, but I couldn't find anywhere more suitable.
Often when going to select a single cell, about 3 or 4 adjoining cells are selected and the only way to de-select them is to go onto another page (part of the sheet) and click on a cell and then go back. Does anyone know why it might do this? it's a bit annoying
Thanks

**Miraun** · 07-10-2012, 09:37 AM

Lets dig deeper!

Is this happening on only one particular workbook, or all workbooks?

Do you have a personal.xls file that's opened when you open excel?

Are you having this massive mouse button clicking problem in other applications as well?

**nje** · 07-10-2012, 09:49 AM

Miraun, thanks for the reply - I have just opened 3 other workbooks and I don't have trouble with them.
It seems to be just the one work book which is the only one open on my PC. The problem is intermittent, but very regular and I don't have mouse clicking problems with anything else.
Sorry , but I don't know what you mean by 'do you have a personal.xls file open.... If you mean does a blank worksheet open and then I just leave it and open the workbook I need, then the answer is 'yes'

**Miraun** · 07-10-2012, 10:23 AM

Hey Nje;

Well, if you're not aware of the personal.xls workbook, then it's likely not the problem! Check out your Accessability feature in Windows.. Other than that, I'm sadly out of ideas

However, here's a bit more info on personal.xls:

A personal.xls file is a workbook that opens every time you open excel. Its great for storing macros that you may need to use across a variety of workbooks, that isn't stored on the particular workbook. However, the personal.xls file will only open on your first instance of excel. So if you were to click the excel icon to open up a second instance, it may have difficulty loading personal.xls again.

Since personal.xls can store and call macros, there's a potential for a macro to be stored in there to have you automatically select a small range when trying to select a particular cell. Open up book1, and open up the VBA view by the keystroke ALT+F11. See if there's a VBA project named Personal.XLS. Depending on Excel version, it may be XLSB. poke around the different excel objects and modules to just see if there's any code in there.

If there is some code in there that you're not aware of, didn't make yourself, or don't remember putting it there, and if you're not too VBA savvy, go ahead and post it here with code tags, and we'll take a look at what it does.

**nje** · 07-10-2012, 10:49 AM

I've just done some searching on the net and it appears that this is a well known bug which microsoft aren't doing anything about, so thanks for your help, but not a lot we can do about it really

**Pauleyb** · 07-10-2012, 10:49 AM

I know I have heard of this bug, now if I can only remember the work around...

I think it had something to do with the zoom of your spreadsheet. Try setting it to 100% and see if the problem still exists (or, if already at 100%, try something else).

Pauley