excel skips to another workbook for no apparent reason

I believe I diagnosed the root of this problem. But I have not necessarily determined a "fun" solution. The issue has something to do with the automatic movement of the active cell upon clicking enter. Excel lets enter move to the right, or down or other such things. There is some sort of glitch or special situation that moves the cell to a different cell in a different open workbook instead of the one you are currently in.

I have solved the problem by going into Options_Advanced and unclicking the "After pressing enter, move selection" setting.

It is a little odd because I used enter to move around the spreadsheets and I am having to adjust my behavior. But the random pop up spreadsheet issue is gone.

Microsoft... this is very, very annoying. Here I am in 2019, reading this 2015 post yet the exact same problem is still there. I know for certain that several other people have it too, one uses Excel on a Mac, yet also has the same problem. 

in my case, the issue occurs at random but frequently (when it starts, it will happen very frequently). Its almost always when  I have multiple workbooks open. In may case they are very large spreadsheets. The symptoms are that you will be clicking into a cell to modify the string or formula and the mouse suddenly behaves oddly in the cell. For example, it may be positioned in the middle of the string (or formula) and then as you type, it jumps for no reason to the start of the cell. Nothing you can do will let you type any more in the cell. you can re-position the cursor, but as soon as you type a printable character it wont accept the input. 

It simply wont behave until you press the ENTER key. When you do... opens and it jumps to a cell in one of the minimised workbooks. 

You can then return to the correct workbook and all seems normal until a few minutes later when it will do the same thing again, and again. It happens  very frequently, once it starts to happen. 

Its not the hardware. Previously I was using my Microsoft brand mouse and keyboard but hoping it was a device fault, bought and switched to Microsoft brand WIRED keyboard and  mouse. The issue persists. It also happens just the same on my desktop PC running 64 bit Windows 10 with Office 365 AND it happens just the same on my new AUD$3,000 Surface Pro. 

It is a productivity killer. Its driving me nuts!!!!

I have been a solid Microsoft supporter since the 1980's, but in the last 2 years or so the serious issues with Windows 10 and Excel have repeatedly tested me to the limit. I ran a small software development team for 12 years and we all know that bugs can get in.... but the solution is to fix and TEST, TEST, TEST - meaning test thoroughly to make sure you don't break more than you fix. I cant help but think that the current Microsoft approach is to Fix and test minimally, then release it to see how many other things are broken. Very sad.

Please Microsoft.. fix this issue, surely this one cant be that hard. Its far more important to customer retention than you might think.

I am convinced that it is a consequence of the changes made to this 2013 version of excel.

Wouldn't it be nice if Microsoft actually did something about it?

I am having the same problem since getting Office 2013. I happens rather a lot. I have never had it jump to a cell or another sheet in the same workbook though; always to other workbooks.

The cell freezes and I have been transported to another workbook. It is important for me to work with multiple workbooks open. I never had this problem with any earlier version of Excel. 

I believe the cause is inherent in the way workbooks are now 'kept separate' from each other.

I have noticed that it jumps to the last active cell used in that particular workbook. 

I have also noticed that this happens an awful lot when the auto save function finishes saving all my open workbooks.

In the past I turned off the auto save function as I had a habit of saving my work regularly. I have not done that yet with 2013. Maybe that will fix the problem.

I am having similar issues although it 'jumps' to a cell in the same workbook.

I believe there was an Auto-update in mid December and there were a few things Microsoft screwed the pooch on. That update deleted all the ActiveX controls out of my workbooks. I don't have a lot of these types but what I do have are important. It turned out to be an easy fix but it's pretty clear MS let some grade school kids write some code for their programs.

I'm not sure what this 'freeze and jump' thing is yet but I can tell you I am looking at other vendors operating systems and spreadsheet software for the first time since I bought my 1st computer in 1990.

On an unrelated (maybe) subject but worth noting  - if you use Office 365, check your Network Resources and see how many connections you have to outside IP addresses for Excel. I found Excel ported to an IP address in Prague this morning. That was the final straw for 365.

They are not 'always on' but they are persistent and a resource hog. Office 365 is coming off my machine.