Cursor Anchor Lock

[Flamikey]

I have had this happen to me in Excel over the years. I am sure it has
to do with a memory issue but I am curious if it has happened to anyone
else. The helpless desk where I work is clueless, I know 10X more
about excel than anyone in the IT dept.

Sometimes, for no apparent reason, my cursor will anchor onto a cell.
I can still move the cursor but it stays in select mode, i.e. if I drag
the mouse it is as if I was holding down the left click button,
selecting cells as I move the mouse. No matter what I do I can't get
the excel to deselect the cell and I have to control/alt/del to kill
the app. I am using excel 2000 on a Windows 2000 server. It was worse
when I was running excel 2000 on windows 98, but it still does happen.

Does anyone know a keystroke that will break this cell lock?

 

[Kieran]

Flamikey,

Keyboard select mode seems to be what you are suffering from.
PF8 toggles the keyboard select mode.

 

[Gord Dibben]

Flamikey

A common cause of this is that you are in "Extended" or "Add" mode.

If you see "EXT" or "ADD" down on the status bar try hitting F8 key a couple
of times.

F8 will will toggle you in and out of Extended mode. SHIFT + F8 will put you
in "ADD" mode.

If you are using a wheel-mouse tap the wheel a couple times.

Also see David McRitchie's "Ghosting" at

http://www.mvps.org/dmcritchie/excel/ghosting.txt

Gord Dibben Excel MVP