Excel scrolls the wrong window on hover

Question

If two (or more) instances of Excel are open, and one of them has the focus, when hovering the second one, scrolling is still applied to the first one. We need to steal focus from the first window of Excel and then scroll the second.

This seems like a bug and can be reproduced easily (more easily with two monitors).

Lets say you have two windows of Excel open : A and B.

You're working on A but you need to read B. hover your mouse over Excel B, scroll... the scrolling occurs in A ! You must click on B, scroll, then return on A.

Now, with focus on A, open another application (let's say Word), and, of course, set the focus to the newly open app. Be sure to see Excel A and B. Hover your mouse over B, scroll... Scrolling still happens on A.

This does not happen with Word or Outlook. If you open 2 windows of Word, the scroll occurs in the one that is hovered, as expected.

I don't think there's a solution, this is a bug and should be adressed by Microsoft.

Answer 1

Fixed in insider build 17040. Now we just have to wait for it to be passed into the main release.

See the link below:

https://blogs.windows.com/windowsexperience/2017/11/16/announcing-windows-10-insider-preview-build-17040-pc/

Answer 2

@Prabhavathi Patil, I know, you are only repeating the problem I described.

This is NOT the expected behavior and you shouldn't say "you may have to click to scroll". Try the same with Word and everything is fine. Word has the expected behavior with scrolling without clicking.

As of Windows 8, scrolling occurs in the hovered window of explorer, too. Not the currently active one.

Your reply did not help. What you could do to help is report this to Microsoft's Office Developers team...

Answer 3

It doesnt appear to only be between excel windows.

In Windows10 with "scroll inactive windows" enabled, if Excel is the active window it effectively cancels this setting out.  If I scroll in IE with Excel as the selected window, it scrolls in Excel.

It can be very frustrating because I keep forgetting that Excel breaks the "scroll inactive windows" setting and it would be preferable if Excel worked with this setting the same as every other program.

Edit:  I am using Windows 10 Anniversary Edition, most recent updates applied as of this post.  I am using Excel 2016 with all available updates applied.

Answer 4

Same problem here. Windows 10586.104, Excel 16.0.6528.1011

Multiple windows of Excel 2016 opened. None of them has focus (all excel windows are inactive).

When trying to use mouse wheel to scroll in inactive Excel window (Windows 10 feature), scrolling happens not in the window where the mouse cursor currently is, but in the last active excel window (even though it’s now inactive).

Different behavior when File screen is opened and the window is too small to display it (scrollbars appear):

When all excel windows are inactive, scrolling of File screen is correct – scrolling where the mouse cursor currently is.

When an excel window with scrollable File screen is active, scrolling happens only in the active window and mouse position on other windows is ignored.

(Current version of Word does not have this problem – both page and File screen scrolling is correct and scrolling in multiple windows behaves like expected in Windows 10)

Answer 5

Hi Michael,

Thank you for posting your question on Microsoft Office Community.

If you do not click on the another file which you are reading by hovering the mouse then it is not possible to scroll on it and scroll operation will be reflecting on the other Excel file which you are currently working on as the current Excel file is active.

Suppose if there are two excel open A and B and you are already working on the editing file A and if you are reading from B but not working on B then you may have to click on file B to scroll.

If you have further questions related to this, please let us know.

Thank you.