Selecing cntrl + arrow key to move to next populated cell

[Guest]

Hi,
This bugs me about excel, and it leads to mistakes, so I thought I'd ask:

When I select Control key plus the arrow key, I thought this skipped all
blank cells and took you to the next populated cell.

What I've found however is that it sometimes ignores cells with content, and
my cursor goes to the bottom of the sheet, leading me to believe that a
column is empty when it is not.

Why does excel do this? does it depend on the data type of the data in the
column? please help, I can't figure it out.
thanks,
Craig

 

[Jim Rech]

Ctrl-Down (for example)

If the active cell is:
Empty - goes to first non-empty cell (or last row if all cells are empty)
Not Empty but next cell is empty - Same as above
Not Empty and next cell is also not empty - goes to last non-empty
contiguous cell

Hidden rows are treated as empty.

If you have an specific example that behaves differently tell us the _exact_
steps that reproduce it.

--
Jim
| Hi,
| This bugs me about excel, and it leads to mistakes, so I thought I'd ask:
|
| When I select Control key plus the arrow key, I thought this skipped all
| blank cells and took you to the next populated cell.
|
| What I've found however is that it sometimes ignores cells with content,
and
| my cursor goes to the bottom of the sheet, leading me to believe that a
| column is empty when it is not.
|
| Why does excel do this? does it depend on the data type of the data in the
| column? please help, I can't figure it out.
| thanks,
| Craig

 

[Guest]

Hi,
I think I explained the issue incorrectly, because I misunderstood it. Cntrl
+ down arrow is taking me to the next blank cell. The problem is that many
cells in a column appear blank, but they actually have something in them.
These data are being copied from other sheets, and there are no blank spaces
in the cells. I've tried using paste special > values, but this also does not
work.

So my question is really a new one: What could be in these cells that stops
excel from seeing them as blank? A colleague is also having this happen to
him with data exported from Access. Maybe excel sees a null value or
something and considers that different from blank?
thank you,
craig