Cannot enter text in cell unless double-click.

[bertnz]

Hi everyone,

I have an Excel 2003 workbook which is occasionally getting into a funny state whereby I cannot enter text into the cells.

I can select the cells fine but it seems only half-selected with no cursor. Hitting the keyboard results in no response. If I double-click a cell then I get the cursor back and I can enter into this and subsequently other cells from then on.

While Excel is in this funny state I can enter values into the formula bar and populate cells from drop-down validation selections. Doing either of these two things seems to put Excel back into normal mode allowing me to select a cell and edit without the double-click.

Does anyone know what state Excel is in when I can select but not edit a cell and how it gets in it?

Just to make things confusing this workbook is running inside a windows forms application (.net 3.5) running inside webpage on IE6. Everything else about the workbook is fine it just occasionally gets in this half-locked state which requires a double-click.

Any help would be greatly appreciated,

cheers,
Robert

 

[Cbrine]

Give this a try.
1. Select Tools...Options from the excel menu bar.
2. Click on the Edit tab.
3. Ensure that the check box "Edit Directly in cell" is checked.

HTH
Cal

 

[bertnz]

I have checked that setting and it is indeed ticked. Is it possible this setting is getting unset somehow through the interop code used when displaying this workbook as part of the application.

Do you know if there is away to set this explicitly through interop?

 

[bbrother]

Did anyone figure this out? I am having the same problem.

 

[jrok57]

Did anyone figure this out? I am having the same problem.

HI!

8 months after this post I had the same issue. Not scroll lock, not edit in cells, not even a defective keyboard...

After about 30 minutes of frustration, I found out it was an error message hiding under the document. So the next time this happens, minimize everything on your desktop, one at a time.

For me, it was a broken email address that was unable to load. The error message must have popped up but I probably clicked back on to the document without noticing it. This error message will prevent you from using your keyboard in the normal fashion (arrow keys, Enter, Tab, typing into cells directly, etc.) but it would allow you to use the toolbar shortcuts keys (F10, Alt) and would allow you to edit cells by double clicking, but not by F2.

Hope this helps the next person

 

[JerBearG]

Awesome! Helped me fix the problem with minimizing and found a similar error to resolve with a different excel instance open.