Excel 2007, Undesired selection of multiple cells

Hi TimFreemanLondon.

Yes that could happen, forgotten merged cells but this happens in areas of normal cells, you click on one and you can get from two to dozens, maybe a square or oblong block, vertical or horizontal.

I believe it is a malfunction of keyboard shortcuts. I'm now using Office 2007 and sometimes in Word I'll get an unwanted command operate, some formating or editing function that I never knew existed, how I have no notion.

All these sofisticated functions are fine if you want to use them but not if you don't, you inadvertently operate them by a combination of key strokes and wham, you look up and there is some strange thing on the screen, you've already pressed more keys so can't hit escape, then you have to try and back up to where you were.

I'd like them all switched off unless I specifically want one to use then I'll select it from a menu. I bet the whole suite of programs would run a lot easier, quicker and less bugs and not give half the heartache there is on all these forums.

Come on Microsoft, this thread has been going for a couple of years and us users are stumbling about in the dark, do any of you ever look at these forums?

Just in case anyone else made the same mistake as me - I was having a similar problem and none of the fixes suggested helped - but actually it was down to having merged cells in the spreadsheet.  When the area I was trying to select went past a merged cell, it automatically picked up the full width of the merged cell.

Hi benzo95 and LColleenW.

I get it at odd times and in different situations but only on a few older books so though you may have made it happen I think there may be quite a few more ways.

Yes you can make it go back to single cell selection by altering zoon or view but when you are in the middle of entering a lot of data it's distracting and should be unnecessary to use a get around.

What we need is a cure and I don't think it will come from us users but will need MS to take it seriously and do a proper fix so it doesn't happen, EVER. We pay good money for the programs so they should work without us having to keep fixinthem.

This probelm has been around for years and affects many versions of excel and is reported on numerous forums.

I imagine the man hours it has taken would be staggering if it could be added up.

So for me, I want a FIX not a GETAROUND, I imagine there are many more like me.

This thread goes back a few years, the getarounds have been mentioned several times but they aren't a cure are they!

I have rewritten some complex (to me) books to get away from the problem, they took many hours to do but that was preferable to getting the problem when you were using that book to get a job finished on time.

Excel 2007, regular Dell mouse. The problem was fixed by switching to Normal View. benzo95's steps from 1/4/2013 to recreate the problem did replicate the problem. I can't believe he/she was able to find that combination of settings.