Excel 2003, Cell Select becomes Column Select

[PamBuffington]

Hello,
I have an Office 2003 user with Win XP (SP1). Occasionally she has
problem where when she selects a cell, it selects the whole colum
instead. She can no longer select menu items, so can not quit out o
excel and must use Task Manager to kill it. When she
goes back into Excel it goes back into this mode where it selects th
whole column. A basic reinstall doesn't fix it, so it has to be one o
the Excel settings somewhere. Has anyone else had this problem? Sh
uses a Dell D600 laptop.

Thanks for any Help!

Pa

 

[Frank Kabel]

Hi
the simple solution could be that she has enabled the extended mode
with F8. Simply hit F8 again and see if it helps. If not you may read:
http://www.mvps.org/dmcritchie/excel/ghosting.txt

 

[Dave Peterson]

Just a guess, but maybe one of the control keys is sticking (on the keyboard).

Ctrl-spacebar selects all the columns in the current selection.

But this doesn't explain the other stuff.

Is she using the mouse to select stuff? If yes, maybe a new mouse or a new
mouse driver would help.

If it happens again, maybe she can use the accelorater keys (Alt+the underlined
letter in the menu option--like Alt-F (to get to File)) would help.

Alt-F4 is the shortcut to close excel.