Is anyone a whizz kid on Excel?

[Surfermum]

Dd was messing around on the computer earlier and has done something to it. I can't figure out what's going on. When I click on a field it seems to lock it and if I move the cursor across it highlights the boxes. There's a huge white cross showing on the box. I can't figure out how to exit.

Has anyone the faintest idea what I'm talking about?

He's broken it

Sorry not much help

Is it merged maybe?
Have you tried usung escape key?

I'm a bit confused as to what you mean...a big white plus sign is normal. Do you have something different?

when you say 'locked' do you mean you get an error message saying read only?

email me it and I'll have a look?

When I move the mouse around there is permanently a big white cross.

I don't think that normally happens does it? It's normally an arrow I think.

no it's normally a cross

sounds like left mouse click may be stuck though.

normally a cross.

Yeah it shouldn't be highlighting the cells unless you're holding down the left mouse button

I'll try again and explain.

I open a document or new sheet.

If I click on cell A1 I can't then do anything. If I move the cursor across or down it starts highlighting all the cells I go over.

There appears to be no escape other than Alt Ctrl and Del.

That would be great, VVV, shall I CAT you?

Sounds like left mouse button is stuck. btw you can also close by using alt+F4

yep, please do

I'll be putting the littlies to bed in a mo, but i'll get on to it as soon as im done.

might be quicker to email me on cheesy_pooff at hotmail dot com, rather than wait for a CAT to get through.

Can you copy what you have into a new work sheet and hopefully it wont copy the problem across??

Press ctrl button and a together
All cells should be highlighted
Then Edit copy

Open a new worksheet
file, new worksheet
then edit paste

If this doesn't work maybe you have frozen some panes.
Click window,unfreeze frames (if they are not frozen it will say freeze frame so ignore this is not the problem)

I had this once [desperately tries to remember what the problem turned out to be]

Sounds like you've frozen the windows. Go to Windows- unfreeze panes. Does that work?

I suspect this might not be an Excel issue.
The symptoms sound like "StickyKeys", and bit of Windows that helps people who have problems pressing keys.

It comes on automatically when you hold a shift key too long. It then acts like the "caps lock" key. Ie it's "on" until you turn it off.

First thing to do is press the shift key, see if the problem goes away.
If not go into control panel, then Accessibility, then turn it off manually.

have you got scroll lock switched on? can't be too specific as I'm not in a position to load up Excel at the mo. Look for an indicator at the bottom of the spreadsheet which says SCROLL or something similar. THis gives odd highlighting/jamming effects

oh yes, could be scroll lock.

It could be you've got CLICK LOCK on.

go to start

click on control panel

click on mouse

untick 'turn click lock on'

If there's no mouse option you may have to click on printers & hardware first!

Thank you for all these suggestions.

It's not a frozen frame.

Pressing shift doesn't work.

Bottom right corner says "NUM SCRL"

Have you got something resting on your ctrl key or any other key on your keyboard? Have you tried rebooting?

Ah... quick Google -- Firstly, and easiest to fix, you might have pressed F8 accidentally. Does it say "EXT" anywhere towards the bottom right of the status bar at the bottom of the screen? If so, press F8 again to toggle it off.

Other suggestions include updating the mouse driver software, and breaking you out of the issue in a particular workbook to Ctrl+PageUp through the range of tabs and then Ctrl+PageDn back down again.

I can vaguely remember reading all the suggestions there when I was trying to fix my problem, but still can't recall whether any of them helped.

yes a stuck ctrl key could do that too.