Mouse Problems in Excel

Hi Winnie,

There's no "EXT" on the bottom of my Excel window, and
pressing F8 doesn't work. Have you heard of any other
possible solutions??

Sandy
>-----Original Message-----
>HI There,
>
>I posted the exact problem up here and I saw a response
to
>another post of similar nature. It said that it happens
>when EXT appears at the bottom of your Excel window. I
>can make it appear when I press F8 but not sure what
other
>scenarios it will appear and if it's the only cause of
>that. If you see that, click on F8 and "EXT" will
>disappear and it should let go of the mouse drag. I'll
>have to wait and see the next time I have this problem to
>see if that solves my problem. I hope so!!
>
>>-----Original Message-----
>>Has anyone had this happen to them?
>>
>>I've noticed a strange error that occurs occasionally in
>>Excel. When you click on some cell, Excel will suddenly
>>start acting as if you are holding and dragging the
>cursor
>>across the worksheet, even though you've just single-
>>clicked. While the program will still follow the mouse
>>cursor around, it won't respond to either mouse button
>>being clicked. So far I've found the only way to fix it
>is
>>to exit Excel and reboot the PC; closing and reopening
>>Excel will still result in the same problem! So far I've
>>only seen it occur on laptops while using touchpads (I
>>have seen it on multiple computers), so I'm not sure if
>>it's the driver going nuts or what.
>>
>>Is this common? If so, what ways are there of
alleviating
>>it, if any? Thanks.
>>.
>>
>.
>

When this happened to me, it was because of my optical mouse. I replaced it with a PS2 Mouse and the problem has not recurred.

I have found several instances of this "Excel mouse problem" on the net and there aren't any clear solutions. I tried switching from optical (Logitech, with wheel) to and OLD logitech 3 button ball mouse - no change. (all this was without rebooting. (I can't afford to reboot because other people are using files over the LAN from my machine). I wonder if rebooting would have fixed it. I am running XP Pro and Office2k. I have seen this before and don't know how I solved it. This time, kind of freaky, I unplugged the mouse, accessed the my work station from another station (started Excel) had the same problem, and then when I plugged in the mouse (optical) the poblem mysteriously vanished. I don't think it is the mouse, I think windows gets into some kind of weird state and the trick is to reset it. (I wonder if a plain old reboot would have fixed it). It is just that today, I couldn't reboot until quite a bit later and I NEED to use Excel. So I started poking around and am offering my two cents.

Just when I thought my problems were over (still not able to reboot) the problem came back. Fixed by pressing the wheel in while on the spreadsheet. Seems to reset the "stuck" nature of the selecting.