Leftmost part of screen "blued" out when calculating via a macro

[Guest]

I have an interesting problem. When I use a macro to calculate a particular
sheet, the area reserved for help appears "blued" out, and the first two
colums in my worksheet are under the "blued" area. Certain functions on the
tools menu are greyed out. These include goalseek, add-ins, options etc.
Moving to another cell on the workbook results in these functions becoming
available. Clicking on the help, Microsoft Excel Help, button overwrites the
"blued" area with excel help. Closing help then results in the workbook being
displayed properly. Does anyone have any suggestions on how to overcome this
problem? Thanks.

 

[David McRitchie]

I don't know of an area for help or a blue area, but it sounds like you
have a cell selected for updating. move the selection. If this is a
Double click Event macro, or a right click event macro include
Cancel = True
to get out of edit mode.

http://www.mvps.org/dmcritchie/excel/grayedout.htm
http://www.mvps.org/dmcritchie/excel/event.htm

 

[Guest]

Hi David, Thanks for trying. The blue area to which I refer is easily found.
On a worksheet, select help from the main menu, then Microsoft Excel Help.
The help window appears on the left hand side of the screen, and the existing
worksheet is displayed on the right hand side of the help box starting from
column A. In my case, the excel help box is just a blue box with nothing
else, and this covers the first couple of columns so that my first visible
column is column C. It is possible to use the arrow keys to navigate to the
underlying cells e.g B2 or A5.

 

[Guest]

Re you HELP box: this is "floating" and can be fixed either left or right
(default) side of your worksheet by clicking and holding the left mouse
button on the help bar (very top of the blue box) and then moving to the
extreme right or left of your worksheet.

HTH

 

[Guest]

This problem occurs regardless of where the HELP box is positioned. If the
HELP box is located on the right hand side of the screen, when the problem
arises, the HELP box is still displayed on the right hand side with all text
etc visible. On the left hand side, the area normally covered by the HELP box
is covered by an empty blue area, and some columns are hidden underneath it.

I've managed to overcome the problem by by using the VBA commands
Application.CommandBars("Task Pane").Visible = True and then
Application.CommandBars("Task Pane").Visible = False.

This overcomes the symptoms, but not the underlying cause.