Excel Extends Selected Cells Up When Using Shift-PageDown -- Selects from Active Cell to Top Row (Wrong Direction)

Question

Periodically and for months, if not more than a year, Excel has exhibited a frustrating behavior when extending a selection. 

If I am on a cell, and I hold the shift key while paging down, the visible rows increase, but the selection goes from the cell I'm in to the top. So although the screen pages down, the selection goes from the current cell up all the way to the first row -- it moves in the opposite (and wrong) direction.

This will happen in one sheet that is open but not necessarily in others. It appears unconnected to frozen rows or columns. Scroll Lock is not engaged. It is typically "fixed" by closing the problem workbook and reopening it. It happens in different sheets at different times, some of which are fairly large and others which are not.

Below are screen grabs demonstrating the behaviour.

Before doing anything.

After pressing Shift-PageDown once.

After, scrolling to the top (but not pressing any keys) -- this shows that even though the visible rows increased, the active cell remains BA4 with the range BA1:BA4 selected.

Any ideas what is going on? I feel it is an Excel bug that's been rearing its head from time to time for a year or more.

This occurs on multiple Windows 10 machines with fully updated systems and Office 365.

Answer 1

Hi adamamiga0,

My name is Gustavo, I'm an independent advisor and I'm here to help you.

I have an idea of what can be done. You can redefine Excel shortcuts, maybe there's something wrong with them. For this procedure, follow the steps in the link below.

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/cust...

Have a nice day!

Answer 2

I'm not sure I understand what you are suggesting. I am not using customized shortcuts. I just use the default Shift-PageDown. And normally that works fine. But on many occasions it exhibits the odd behavior I describe.

Are you saying tweaking shortcuts might resolve this behavior?

Answer 3

Adam

I was having the same issue with Office 365.  I'm not sure if it happened after an update.

I did a quick repair of office, and the issue has been fixed.

Answer 4

Yeah, this is a pretty annoying new bug in Excel 365 for the past couple years.
It makes it more difficult to select pages worth of rows of a sheet with frozen panes, since the way I would normally do so is holding the shift key and pressing PgDn or PgUp multiple times, which no longer works.

Normally the PageDown and PageUp keys behave comparably to the Down and Up arrow keys, the difference being the effect per key press is a whole screen's worth of rows instead of a single row at a time. 
Each press of either PgDn or PgUp should change which cell is selected, downward or upward.  Or, when combined with the Shift key, should extend or contract the multi-cell selection downward or upward.

That has "always" been the way PgDn and PgUp work in Excel.  And it still is they way PgDn and PgUp work for worksheets that don't have "Freeze Panes" enabled.

But recently the function of the PgDn and PgUp keys changed for worksheets with "Freeze Pane" enabled.  On these sheets, after the bug gets triggered, PgDn and PgUp have two effects. 
Effect #1 is to scroll the view downward or upward one screen's worth of rows.   (This is similar to what happens with "normal" PgDn/PgUp functionality.) 
Effect #2 is that--instead of changing cell selection upward or downward from the previous selection--a cell in one of the the top visible frozen rows gets activated and selected.

For the bug to present, there must be at least one frozen column and at least one frozen row.
One way to trigger the bug is by selecting a cell in the frozen row(s).
Other ways to trigger the bug include:
 - pressing the right arrow key followed by the left arrow key;  
 - pressing the left arrow key followed by the right arrow key;  
 - pressing the down arrow key followed by the up arrow key;  
 - pressing the up arrow key followed by the down arrow key.  

Here's one way to replicate the bug.  Begin as follows:
 • create a new blank worksheet
 • select cell B4 and ensure cell A1 is still visible
 • Freeze panes

The PgDn/PgUp bug is not yet in effect.  Now demonstrate normal PgDn/PgUp behavior by continuing as follows:
 • press the PageDown key (selected cell ia a screen worth of rows downward, e.g. B36)
 • press the PageUp key (selected cell has returned to B4)

The above is still normal PgDn/PgUp behavior.  Now trigger the bug by continuing as follows:
 • press the up arrow key (selected cell is now B3, which is within the frozen rows 1 through 3)

The PgDn/PgUp bug is now in effect.  Now demonstrate the bug by continuing as follows:
 • press the PageDown key (selected cell should be a screen worth of rows downward but instead is B1)

Answer 5

I really appreciate your confirmation of the issue and detailed analysis. Even though I first posted the issue, I was not able to replicate it using the steps you gave. And I added Shift to the Page Up and Page Down to see if that triggered the bug (since that is when it happens for me). So, I still can't consistently create the issue. But, thanks to you (T-revly) and AndyMorgan6, I know it's not just me.