OT. Is it posible to turn of Excels obnoxious navgation behaviour ?

[JesperMP]

Hi there.

I am using Excel for editing alarm texts en masse.
The cursor is automatically being placed somewhere when I dont want to. Before I see what has happened, I have typed into a wrong cell.

It happens when I use the left-arrow key (going back to correct a typo in the text for example), then it seems to think I want to go to the cell to the left, and not to the left inside the current cell.

And it happens when I triple-click on a cell, then it jumps to the bottom-most cell in the sheet. I know I shouldnt triple-click, but it can happen when I want to select a cell, and then click again to enter the existing text for modifying.

Now I have lived with this idiotic behaviour for years, and I think maybe enough is enough.

Anyone ?

PS. Office Excel 2003.

 

[TheStarr]

Looks like your not the only one.

http://www.experts-exchange.com/Sof...Office_Suites/MS_Office/Excel/Q_22767686.html

Unfortunately I don't have a membership to "experts-exchange" and they don't share nice like plctalk.net!!!

 

[TheStarr]

Got one more. When using the arrow keys there is an ENTER mode and an EDIT mode. Click in a cell and look in the bottom left corner of the screen.

Switch between the two modes using the F2 key.

ENTER mode jumps around like you said.
EDIT mode lets you move in the text like you would expect.

 

[JesperMP]

It seems you are almost correct.
You have to use F2 anyway (if you dont use the mouse).
Then the cell is in Edit mode, so you have to hit F2 again to go to Enter mode. After the cell is finished, you have to repeat that again for the next cell.
So it seems I have to hit F2 twice for each cell. Is that better ? I am not sure.
Is it possible to force Enter mode ?

Thanks anyway.

edit: I am confused now. I have to enter F2 once and it works as intended.
It seems that I can hit F2 twice by mishap, and I get the undesired effect.
It is the same as the triple-click. It is 'my mistake' because I dont do as expected.
I really really want to eradicate this 'feature' from my Excel.

 

[Stevie_S]

When you start editing a cell using F2 you can then move left/right in the cell without changing cell. So if you always use one press of F2 you should be fine......I think.

 

[JesperMP]

When you start editing a cell using F2 you can then move left/right in the cell without changing cell. So if you always use one press of F2 you should be fine......I think.

Oh yeah, right, my bad.
I shall try to remember to never hit F2 twice.
Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr.............

 

[rdrast]

While I do use Excel a lot as an intermediate tool, I started doing more and more editing in UltraEdit, then switched to UEStudio and am loving it. If only they supported CSV's directly!, but that's a limitation I can deal with.

 

[JesperMP]

Yet another software package ? Maybe.
I was hoping that infinite bliss would come by modifying just one setting in Excel.

 

[TheStarr]

When you start editing a cell using F2 you can then move left/right in the cell without changing cell. So if you always use one press of F2 you should be fine......I think.

So I guess this is strange, I thought it covered the whole document, like you were in ENTER mode or EDIT mode. But it seems that it remembers PER CELL what mode is set.

Maybe there is a way to set the mode for the whole workbook, but who knows....

You can watch it change in the bottom left corner when you double-click vs triple-click.

Got to love Microsoft!

 

[DairyBoy]

Can you make a macro to simulate "enter + f2" so that when you finish the cell, you press the macro key instead of enter, so it jumps down one cell and goes into edit mode in one go?

 

[Brian123]

Looks like your not the only one.

http://www.experts-exchange.com/Sof...Office_Suites/MS_Office/Excel/Q_22767686.html

Unfortunately I don't have a membership to "experts-exchange" and they don't share nice like plctalk.net!!!

There's a trick to getting them to share...

If you start on a google search page and click in the the answers will be shown.


http://www.google.com/search?source...ble+mouse+shortcuts+in+Excel+2003?+Win+XP+SP2

Link to a google search that brings up their page. It was the first hit for me. Just keep scrolling down. I _know_ it looks the same, but just keep scrolling down...

Brian
http://www.google.com/search?source...ble+mouse+shortcuts+in+Excel+2003?+Win+XP+SP2

 

[realolman]

...I was hoping that infinite bliss would come ....

That's what keeps the whole world turning

 

[TheStarr]

Nice one Brian123! Why didn't I think of that? I should have noticed the extra long scroll bar.

So here is 'their' suggestion:

"One way to do it is to turn off "Allow cell drag and drop ":

Tools>Options...>Edit (tab)>Allow cell drag and drop (un-check)"

Not sure how it will effect you, but anything has to help, right?

 

[GeoffC]

If you are willing to try different software I would recommend OpenOffice. Compatible with Office (opens and saves to office formats) and I find navigation much easier

 

[JesperMP]

Great trick Brian.
Not sure if diabling "allow cell drag and drop" does away with insane cursor jumping about. Will try it.

Geoff, I have installed Open Office on some of my familys PCs. I like it too.
However, I a not 100% in charge of my work PCs. They are governed by our IT department, seemingly staffed by bureaucrats brought in from the former Soviet Union. I can install my own tools, but I dont think they will accept me exchanging M$ office.