Excel Cursor seems to be stuck in macro record mode

[sugarbunnie]

Have a user whose Excel will flip over into what appears to be a macro or field select mode without warning. The cursor begins to drag cells, highlighting them as if they are being set up to record a macro or establish a print area and the only way to get out of this is to reboot her system. I have replaced her mouse driver several times, the system at one point had the Friends Greeting nonsense on it. This user loads spreadsheets up from the network drive rather than opening them up through Excel. I have disabled the macros on her system, I have done the NIMDA fix on her system as NIMDA will also cause this and even completely uninstalled and reinstalled Office and she is still having this problem. Has anybody else seen this and if so, were you able to fix it? Short of rebuilding her box, I have tried everything I know of.

 

[Doroth]

I'm gonna take a stab here. This may be way too simple, but it is worth a shot!

Is she using a mouse with a rollerball? I had a similar problem a while back and came to figure out that I would accidently click the rollerball (which I hadn't really noticed was clickable before then). The cursor would change into a four-directions navigational looking thing. It would be very annoying, selecting everything that it passed over... sounds kinda like what your user is noticing!

Eventually, I realized that when it happened, I could fix it by clicking the rollerball again to deselect the strange behavior. Hope this helps. Good luck either way!

 

[sugarbunnie]

Thanks for the info Dorothy, I will definately file that one away for future use (my users are without a doubt the most creatively distructive ones I have ever encountered and I am sure that one will come up!). But no, she is using a regular mouse. I've never been able to make it do what she says it does, although I have seen it in the middle of it's crisis. The only application that is effected is Excel and it's acting like one of those old macro viruses from 97-98 if that helps anybody else with ideas.

 

[KenWright]

Does she by any chance have EXT showing in the status bar. If so then hit F8 to get out of extended mode, which would act in a similar manner to that described.

Regards
Ken.............

 

[sugarbunnie]

Thanks, Ken, I didn't notice, but with her, there is no telling. Her favorite trick is to hit all the keys at random when this happens and THEN call me. I really appreciate the input, folks. I have 'fixed' this for her at least 15 times in the last two months, so it has to be something she is activiating and doesn't know she is doing.

 

[Dreamboat]

Generally, this is caused by a need to clean up temporary files on the PC:

http://www.theofficeexperts.com/cleanyourpc.htm

Anne Troy

http://www.TheOfficeExperts.com

Word and Excel Macros
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