Microsoft Excel - How to Turn Off Auto-Selection of Multiple Cells

Same. Please add me to the ticket. This just popped up for me in the last week while using our iPad pro. Excel is one of the primary functions I use so this needs to be addressed. I just looked and it seems the issue was logged back in November and its mid January so a solution/explanation should be coming shortly.

Hello Microsoft Community,

I have Excel for my iPad Air 3. I’ve come across this problem that seems to randomly show itself when I am working on a spreadsheet. When using my apple pencil or fingers, I can click and move around no problem. Yet, sometimes, it then starts to auto-select multiple cells when I click a new cell. I need this to stop! I don’t know if I keep pressing some button? Searching through Google hasn’t revealed anything. I can’t get it to stop unless i restart Excel or turn off/on my ipad. But the problem keeps showing up.

As an example, let’s say I was working on B4. Once this wonky setting takes ahold, a new selection of cells is highlighted using B4 as its starting point if I click any other cell in the Excel spreadsheet.

Please help! Thank you

There is clearly a design flaw in the interface with iPad.  Solutions for desktop are not available for the tablet (no function key, no mouse).  Perhaps MS can make a keyboard function available to deselect range mode.

Same issue. App update please!

Hello Microsoft Community,

I have Excel for my iPad Air 3. I’ve come across this problem that seems to randomly show itself when I am working on a spreadsheet. When using my apple pencil or fingers, I can click and move around no problem. Yet, sometimes, it then starts to auto-select multiple cells when I click a new cell. I need this to stop! I don’t know if I keep pressing some button? Searching through Google hasn’t revealed anything. I can’t get it to stop unless i restart Excel or turn off/on my ipad. But the problem keeps showing up.

As an example, let’s say I was working on B4. Once this wonky setting takes ahold, a new selection of cells is highlighted using B4 as its starting point if I click any other cell in the Excel spreadsheet.

Please help! Thank you

There is clearly a design flaw in the interface with iPad.  Solutions for desktop are not available for the tablet (no function key, no mouse).  Perhaps MS can make a keyboard function available to deselect range mode.

Thanks! I’ll give this a try the next time it acts up. It’s very frustrating for this to happen so often.

Hi, the solution that seems to work is if you move the selection back to a single cell by working out where it wants you to go. There is usually one master cell that wherever you move is always part of the selection. Once you have only one cell selected, you can usually use backspace/ the curser to move to the cell you actually want to be in.  Good luck. Ectremely frustrating not being able to highlight what you want and the selction tool having a mind of its own.