Selection range locks up

[Fred P.]

This is a situation that has occured off and on and every
time it occurs, it infuriates me.

I'm running Win 98 SE with Office 2000.

I'm working in Excel. Every once in a while, and
seemingly without notice because I can never figure out
what happened, the selection range on a worksheet seems to
get "stuck." When I move the mouse the selected cells go
all over the place. I can't click on a cell outside the
selected cells to disengage the selection and I can't hit
escape to teterminate the selection.

When I hit ctrl, alt, delete and then try to terminate
excel, it says "excel cannot be quit" or something like
that. All I can do is turn the machine off and reboot.

I've got autosave set to save every 5 minutes and after
doing a bunch of stuff within a short period of time, I
manually save as well, so I haven't lost anything
important.

As far as I know, I've done all the Windows and Office
updates.

It's just a weird thing that happens and it's frustrating
not to know how to prevent this. Does anyone know why
this happens? Your help is appreciated.

 

[Frank Kabel]

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

 

[Guest]

First make sure your Windows OS and Office have
the latest service packs. Your buggy Excel may
be fixed in them.

 

[Guest]

The "ext" lockup has infuriated me for ~5 years. A student
of mine showed me the F8 control but everytime I stumble
into ext, I forget the F8 key - and I just did it 2 days ago.
Thanks for the reminder.

By the way, if you "ext," highlight a range, and hit enter
(as if you were entering data to a range) the anchored
cell is relocated.