Excel 2016 - Cannot type anything into a cell all of a sudden

Anonymous
2017-04-14T07:08:05+00:00

Hi,

I am experiencing a problem with Excel 2016 that is really frustrating.

I am working normally in excel 2016, when all of a sudden I cannot type anything into a cell. If I press Ecs nothing happens. I do not have macros, nor protected sheet or cells. I am working with multiple (2 or more) open excel files at the same time. I tried to figure out, if I press some combination of keys that would cause this, but found nothing. I, however, can move the mouse over the sheet and click different cells. I think the arrow keys work as well.

The strange thing that always "solves" the problem is pressing Enter. Pressing the Enter opens another Excel file that is already opened, and after simply going back to the first one, I then can work on normally. This can occur once, twice but sometimes even 10-times in a single day! Just terrible.

This is time demanding, many times I write into a cell and then see that the cell is still blank, I press the enter to make it work again, going back... - I cannot work like this.

When I was working with the same files in Excel 2013 and 2010 I hadn't have experienced such problems. 

I already read some other forums with people experiencing the same problem, but haven't found any solution yet.

Do you have any?

Thank you!

P.

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  1. Anonymous
    2018-06-11T18:44:42+00:00

    I’m sure they must be working on it but it just must be beyond their current abilities.  Everyone in our company that uses Excel daily, has seen this as well.  They are probably in denial until they can figure it out.

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  2. Anonymous
    2018-06-08T13:16:10+00:00

    I have the exact same issue as reported in the posts above. I have 2 workbooks open. I will b typing into cells on one just fine and then all of the sudden I am no longer able to type in any cell. I'll single-click the cell and type and nothing happens. I double-click the cell and I am able to type but then when I click on another cell, the text disappears. If I hit Enter, it immediately jumps to the other workbook that is open. I then have to go back to the first workbook, and then when I single- or double-click a cell, I am then able to type text and when I click to a different cell, the text stays and does not disappear.

    I was already dreading the upgrade to 2016 from 2010 because I liked the 2010 interface so much more. This bug makes it that much more painful. Extremely frustrating.

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  3. Anonymous
    2018-05-21T04:09:09+00:00

    I have been having the same problem atleast once per day, but I can't figure out anything that I've done differently when it happens. 

    When I can't enter data, I can still click on cells and highlight them with the mouse, but can't enter data in those cells either.  It's like there is a transparent image up over the top of my sheet letting me move around to other cells, but keeping me from typing in any of them.

    After I find out I cant type in a cell, I normally click on save, then File & Close.  It looks like it's closing something, but the excel sheet is still there and I can enter data again. 

    What a waste of time!

    Please fix this!

    Dave T

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  4. Anonymous
    2018-04-18T14:05:27+00:00

    I have developed several macro heavy applications for my company in excel 2010 which have worked very smoothly and without too many serious issues for roughly 2 years. After the recent upgrade to 2016 performance has gone out the window and all sorts of weird issues have started popping up that are killing productivity. 

    One of the problems that users frequently run into is that they are unable to type text into cells of the application dashboard. As others already mentioned the problem can be solved by switching between workbooks or even worksheets and then moving back to the original worksheet.

    In a bitter sense I'm 'glad' there at least is a workable solution but it's still dealing a severe blow to the user experience offered by the application so I would love to learn of a permanent fix.

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  5. Anonymous
    2018-04-17T00:09:06+00:00

    I am having this problem also, doing taxes with 3-5 workbooks/files open. I "fixed" it by closing all but 2 workbooks/files.

    I just read about clicking on a workbook on my desktop and it is shown but not active?  Confusing.

    I think Microsoft needs to fix this. I have relatively new ThinkPad with plenty of ram

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