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Microsoft Excel - How to Turn Off Auto-Selection of Multiple Cells

Anonymous
2020-11-13T00:09:21+00:00

Hello Microsoft Community,

I have Excel for my iPad Air 3. I’ve come across this problem that seems to randomly show itself when I am working on a spreadsheet. When using my apple pencil or fingers, I can click and move around no problem. Yet, sometimes, it then starts to auto-select multiple cells when I click a new cell. I need this to stop! I don’t know if I keep pressing some button? Searching through Google hasn’t revealed anything. I can’t get it to stop unless i restart Excel or turn off/on my ipad. But the problem keeps showing up.

As an example, let’s say I was working on B4. Once this wonky setting takes ahold, a new selection of cells is highlighted using B4 as its starting point if I click any other cell in the Excel spreadsheet.

Please help! Thank you

Microsoft 365 and Office | Excel | For home | Windows

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  1. Anonymous
    2020-11-18T17:02:41+00:00

    Adding one to this. This is definitely a bug in excel. It started happening on my iPad Pro within the last few days. It only happens in Excel and in no other apps. And killing excel and restarting it makes it go away for a period of time.

    It appears that periodically Excel anchors the first tap so that subsequent taps change the size and range of the multiple-cell selection, rather than deselecting the first cell. It is like the shift key is being held down, but its not.

    10+ people found this answer helpful.
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  2. Anonymous
    2020-11-24T08:56:04+00:00

    I have been having this same exact problem and it has made using excel virtually impossible and extremely frustrating! Nothing will get the cells to deselect unless I exit out and restart my computer. And now thats not even working. Please fix this issue!

    8 people found this answer helpful.
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  3. Anonymous
    2020-11-22T09:24:25+00:00

    I am having the same problem!!! Super frustrating.

    7 people found this answer helpful.
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  4. Anonymous
    2020-11-16T06:51:40+00:00

    I now know that tapping and dragging the selection handler is not causing this problem. I have done this, but clicking a different cell will stop the multiple selection function.

    My problem will keep selecting new groupings of cells as I click around the cells..with no way of stopping it without closing my Excel and re-opening the document. Odd, right?

    4 people found this answer helpful.
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  5. Anonymous
    2021-01-09T18:57:00+00:00

    Hi, the solution that seems to work is if you move the selection back to a single cell by working out where it wants you to go. There is usually one master cell that wherever you move is always part of the selection. Once you have only one cell selected, you can usually use backspace/ the curser to move to the cell you actually want to be in.  Good luck. Ectremely frustrating not being able to highlight what you want and the selction tool having a mind of its own.

    3 people found this answer helpful.
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