Phantom Drop down boxes in excel 2016

Anonymous
2016-01-14T14:47:08+00:00

I use lots of data validation drop down list and recently some phantom boxes have been appearing in my spreadsheets.  You can select the grey arrow but the list is empty.  You then select the cell to get the correct data validation list, which appears to overlay the the box.  Can anyone help?  I created a new spreadsheet from scratch and it appeared to have fixed it but today i opened the spreadsheet and once again i have phantom drop down lists!!!

I removed all the data validation from the cell and it still remained!

Can anyone help?

Microsoft 365 and Office | Excel | For home | Windows

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  1. Anonymous
    2017-06-07T00:58:49+00:00

    To be clear, are you discussing the mobile app which is the original post I created, or are you discussing a brand new thread and an error in the desktop app?

    Your fix has nothing to do with the mobile app issue. The mobile app issue was repaired by Microsoft in 2016. And the mobile app does not run VBasic or macros. Also the error in the Mobile app was not caused the way you mentioned it was caused. I ought to know, I reported the error in the first place.

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  2. Anonymous
    2017-05-26T11:33:28+00:00

    This corrects the problem. To prevent it, make sure to not have multiple validation list cells selected when saving/closing the workbook.

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  4. Anonymous
    2016-09-09T15:30:31+00:00

    The patch you speak of is Microsoft's match, not mine. I wish I could control when they push it out, however you should have it by now. They assured me it went into global distribution. The patch does NOT remove preexisting phantom boxes. Those must be removed manually. The only truly effective way to remove the phantom boxes is by deleting the entire column or entire row. Scripts created by others don't seem to do an effective job as hoped and it is unclear why that is the case.

    Historically, when the problem occurred, the phantom boxes would never occur in the worksheet in position 1 in the workbook. It was consistent on other workbooks. It would only occur in a worksheet when the cursor was left on a cell with a dropdown validation cell.

    I hope your system is patched now and you have been able to fix your workbooks.

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  5. Anonymous
    2016-08-20T16:20:55+00:00

    Read back toward the beginning of this long thread. The problem happens iff you have selected a cell that has list validation at the time you save. It may need to be the first list validation cell on the sheet, I don't recall. Even non-active sheets-if the selection was left at the first list validation cell and the file is saved, I believe the problem occurs there, too.

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