shudson
asked on
Mouse gets stuck in Excel
Whenever I open Excel and click on a cell, the cursor gets stuck highlighting cells. I cannot click out of it. I can't even use the keyboard to select menu options. The only way to get out of it is to open up the Task Manager and kill Excel. I am using NT with a Logitech serial mouse.
Hi SHudson,
some more question:
Does this only apply to one (or more) particular workbooks or does it happen every time you start Excel (it seems from your question this is the case though).
Some things to check & try:
1a- This could be caused by macros hidden in the personal.xls workbook or other hidden workbooks in the XLStart directory. This directory can be found under C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office\XLStart\ and all files in there are automatically opened when you start Excel.
To check this, rename the directory to XLStart2 (just for testing) and open Excel. Then test by clicking & clicking if this solved the problem. If yes, go to step 2.
1b- The same can be said of any alternative startup directory's. To check this, start Excel, go to Tools/Options/General (now don't click on any cels, you know better why than me :-)), and check if anything is written in 'Alternate Startup File Location'. If there is, remember the path, then just delete the text box, click OK, close Excel, restart Excel. If behaviour is gone, go to step 2
2 - If any of both above trials gave the results you want, you'll have to find out which file is causing trouble. Undo the step you performed in step 1 to overcome the trouble (or rename XLStart2 to XLStart, or put the found path back into Alternate Startup File Location.
Now re-open Excel, press immediately Alt+F11 (opens VB Editor). In the VBEditor, you'll see a kind of explorer tree on the ledt. In this tree, all opened files are represented with MSProject (Filename). Developing the trees, you'll see 'ThisWorkbook' and 'Sheet1', 'Sheet2' ...
Right-click on each of them, select 'View Code' and look if any code shows up. If you see things like
Private Sub Worksheet_SelectionChange(
...STUFFF STUFF
End Sub
or
Private Sub Workbook_Open()
STUFF STUFF
End Sub
or similar Private Sub anything () with code in it, you should delete it, save it (inside the Visual Basic Editor).
Once everything checked and deletions on unexpected things done and saved, close VBE, close Excel, re-open Excel and test.
Hope this is of any help
Calacuccia
some more question:
Does this only apply to one (or more) particular workbooks or does it happen every time you start Excel (it seems from your question this is the case though).
Some things to check & try:
1a- This could be caused by macros hidden in the personal.xls workbook or other hidden workbooks in the XLStart directory. This directory can be found under C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office\XLStart\ and all files in there are automatically opened when you start Excel.
To check this, rename the directory to XLStart2 (just for testing) and open Excel. Then test by clicking & clicking if this solved the problem. If yes, go to step 2.
1b- The same can be said of any alternative startup directory's. To check this, start Excel, go to Tools/Options/General (now don't click on any cels, you know better why than me :-)), and check if anything is written in 'Alternate Startup File Location'. If there is, remember the path, then just delete the text box, click OK, close Excel, restart Excel. If behaviour is gone, go to step 2
2 - If any of both above trials gave the results you want, you'll have to find out which file is causing trouble. Undo the step you performed in step 1 to overcome the trouble (or rename XLStart2 to XLStart, or put the found path back into Alternate Startup File Location.
Now re-open Excel, press immediately Alt+F11 (opens VB Editor). In the VBEditor, you'll see a kind of explorer tree on the ledt. In this tree, all opened files are represented with MSProject (Filename). Developing the trees, you'll see 'ThisWorkbook' and 'Sheet1', 'Sheet2' ...
Right-click on each of them, select 'View Code' and look if any code shows up. If you see things like
Private Sub Worksheet_SelectionChange(
...STUFFF STUFF
End Sub
or
Private Sub Workbook_Open()
STUFF STUFF
End Sub
or similar Private Sub anything () with code in it, you should delete it, save it (inside the Visual Basic Editor).
Once everything checked and deletions on unexpected things done and saved, close VBE, close Excel, re-open Excel and test.
Hope this is of any help
Calacuccia
This applies for an embedded spreadsheet but nonetheless have a look:
WD97: Mouse Click Selects Multiple Cells in Embedded Spreadsheet
http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/Q140/8/69.asp
WD97: Mouse Click Selects Multiple Cells in Embedded Spreadsheet
http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/Q140/8/69.asp
ASKER
I switched the mice from serial to PS2 and the problem went away....for now. Thanks for your help.
ASKER
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To whomever controls this sort of thing -- I'd vote that you leave this question available for others to view, even if you give shudson's points back. This was a potentially interesting solution to a problem we'd been having here.
shudson: Ask Community Support with a 0 pointer to transfer http://www1.experts-exchange.com/questions/10318224/Mouse-gets-stuck-in-Excel.html to the PAQ and refund your points.
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What version of Excel? And are you using a document management program (i.e., PC DOCS) to launch Excel?