Weird Excel Problem

I didn't see any posts about this issue, but I'm wondering if anybody can help me out.

On my XP machine, for some reason recently if I open Excel 2002 and try to click anywhere on the spreadsheet, it will highlight a cell. Then I move the mouse and it keeps dragging an area to select. The problem is I click it another 10,000 times and it won't stop selecting cells. I have no clue why this mouse isn't working correctly. It works just fine everywhere else, but for some reason in Excel it suddenly found an error or something in the software and it seems to like it.

Anybody have any ideas?

 

I can't duplicate it, although I have seen it before, and I think it is a keyboard issue with either the Scroll lock key on and/or the numlock key off??

 

Look in Control Panel>Mouse for button settings. See if the left mouse button is set to "Click lock." If so, when you click on one cell until you click on that same cell again the mouse will act as if you were holding down the left mouse button. The Default setting is just "Click" for the left mouse button.

 

I checked the Mouse settings. The Click Lock option wasn't checked, but it didn't seem to fix things when I selected it just to see what would happen.

Also tried different combinations of Scroll Lock and Num Lock, but I think either my mouse is messed up or Excel has some really weird bug that popped up or something.

For some reason a few weird things happened like the Excel problem and in Internet Explorer, only 1/2 the shortcuts work (i.e. - I can tab over, but page up/down doesn't work anymore).

 

Weird Excel Problem (progress?)

Anyone solved this yet? I'm experiencing the same problem using Excel 2000 on a Windows 200o client.

 

As WhitPhil says, It seems like a keyboard sticky key - but then it should be
noticeable from other apps as well. Have you tried a different keyboard ?
regards

 

Check in Control Panel>Accessibility Options to see if Sticky Keys have been enabled. Pressing the Shift key 5 times in succession will turn on Sticky Keys unless you disable it in Accessibility Options.

While you're there, check the other tabs and buttons to see if there's anything else that needs disabling.

 

Robn:

Does it look like the following???

If you go to the desktop, click and hold the right mouse button,and move the mouse??

Ie: THAT type of a selection?

 

Sticky keys etc are all OK (Disabled). I have tried a different keyboard. No change. Not sure what WhitPhil means by trying to select off the desktop.

I think I'll probably cut my losses and uninstall and install Office 2003 instead which I have available! It would be nice to find out what is causing this though.

 

Robn:

Go to the Desktop and do what I illustrated.

Is THAT what the selection looks like when you do it in Excel??

 

Problem Confirmed with Image Evidence

http://homepages.gac.edu/~mrippenk/excel.gif

This gif shows what he is talking about. I am currently attempting to diagnose this problem, myself, for a Faculty member on my college campus. The problem appears the first time you select a Cell in Excel. If you move your mouse after selecting a cell all cells between your pointer and that original cell are highlighted. You can even move your mouse pointer outside the field of the Excel program and it will still track it...as in continuously scroll downward, or to the side, whatever side your pointers lies on.

No data can be entered, and I have attempted to reinstall the program with no success.

 

Question of Possible Solution

Greetings,

Our of curiousity, you mentioned the mouse works fine elsewhere, but have you tried swappign mice? If you have any spares, that is. The problem I had found, where even drag-and-drop was broken, was due to a faulty mouse.

 

Same problem -- some more details

I'm seeing this exact behavior -- actually found this forum through Google trying to troubleshoot the problem. Unfortunately, this post doesn't provide the answer -- just more details on the problem.

I'm using XP Professional. The Excel weirdness hits me about twice a week -- it doesn't happen immediately when I start using Excel, and I haven't been able to figure out what's triggering it. I'm not doing anything crazy in Excel when it happens.

I'm using a laptop with a push stick as well as a touchpad. I usually have the push stick disabled. To test the "it's the mouse" theory, I switched my settings to only use the push stick. No dice. The problem persists.

Also, I always have a simultaneous problem in Lotus Notes when the problem crops up in Excel. In Notes, the mouse acts "stuck" as well. Notes, though, is a bit more friendly when it comes to exiting gracefully from the app once the issue crops up.

The only way I've found to get things working again is by rebooting.

 

Sp3

I am having the same problem with excel. Problem occurs weather using touchpad, regular mouse, or stick mouse on laptop.

Using Office 2000, but noticed this problem started happening after installing SP3.