Excel cursor identifying incorrect cell in spreadsheet

Question

Hi, I've a problem with the cursor identifying the wrong cell in Excel. Happens regularly and to resolve it I either have to close/reopen Excel or increase/decrease the zoom. Running Mac10.15.2 [Catalina] and Excel 16.16.17. Have seen this issue flagged before: but I seem to be using the latest iteration of both OS and Excel so updating has not helped. Grateful for any advice which stops this very frustrating issue. Thanks, Rory

Answer 1

Thanks Jim,

I guess you could sense my frustration with this.

Can I forward this thread to Microsoft's developer team too?

Best wishes, Rory

Answer 2

Hi Rory,

I don't know how to forward a thread to the developer team. The way to send them your issue is to use the Smile button I referred to earlier.

You should be able to get 16.16.18 now or within the next day or two by going to the Help menu in Excel and choosing Check for Updates to launch AutoUpdate.

Answer 3

Hi Rory,

We appreciate that you posted back and provided so detailed test results. Sorry for the delay reply. We do understand the inconvenience caused by it.

According to your description, this issue has been resolved when you copy all data in problematic table to the latest version table, if so, it seems that this issue may be related previous files.

At the same time. I want to confirm that if your problematic table extension is .xls. If so, please try to convert the extension to .xlsx to see if the issue is resolved.

Besides, we really have a fully understanding about your situation, although it will bring some inconvenience, to not affect your work, for the best practice, we suggest you copy all data in problematic table to the latest Excel version. If you still have any concern about this situation, you can also follow Jim's advice to send feedback via clicking the smile button on the top-right corner in the Excel.

Appreciating for your understanding.

Best Regards,

Higgins

Answer 4

You'd wish it to be so Higgins, unfortunately the problem just won't be cured. It has just recurred - so I clicked the sad face!

Your 1st paragraph phrase 'understand the inconvenience' probably doesn't do the problem justice. It affects every annual and running spreadsheet related to my medical practice in the years 2000=>2020; whether they be mileage; patient related information from DOB to diagnosis; financials exported as .csv

With respect to the 2nd paragraph - that would be a NO. I converted all the spreadsheets to .xlsx in Excel:mac 2011. They seem to work ok in 'normal' but not 'page' view. Exporting the small sheet I used to illustrate the issue into a new sheet created in Excel for Mac 2016 resulted in near complete loss of formatting such that I could not recreate the original page view:

• the headings only appear on the first page,
• the rows/margins are all different,
• because of this the counting cells which continue from bottom row Lt table to upper row Rt table on each page are no longer at the top and bottom of each page,
• trying to resolve these issues in a spread sheet of 1442 lines and 8 columns lead to a near complete failure of my normal good sense of humour. So you could well imagine what repeating the same manoeuvre in a sheet 14224 rows with columns A to Y would do to my sunny disposition!!

So paragraph 3 is complete non-starter for me, because if I lose the formatting or a patient's details get substituted for another's then professionally I am liable for any resultant adverse outcome. And to date, I have seen no evidence that there is a solution to this issue short of MS correcting whatever glitch currently exists in the next upgrade.

Answer 5

Hi Rory

Thank you very much to updating to help us better understand your test result, And I'm very sorry that my copy paste suggestion can’t work for you because it will cause format issue. I will try my best to help you. In the meantime,  please pay attention to back up the source files.

In your previous reply, you 've tried all the suggestions provided, but this issue persists and l noticed that some users have a similar issue with you, and the current issue may be related older version files, large amount of data or local environment. I really would like to help you, I 've tried to test on my side, for example, add a large amount of sample data and open it in different version of office client but we have not been able to reproduce this issue. In order to reproduce this issue and check if this issue related old version file, could you please provide a problematic table, you can send your file according to this private email, in order to protect your privacy, please replace the sensitive information with other sample data.

Thank you again for your understanding and support. I will continue to track this post, you can reply in your free time, I will reply the update as soon as possible.

Regards,

Higgins