# How to turn off highlights in Excel

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-to-turn-off-highlights-in-excel/1011825>\
**Category:** Factual Questions\
**Created:** [December 18, 2024, 7:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-to-turn-off-highlights-in-excel/1011825 "2024-12-18T19:00:47Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 6\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![Johnny\_L.A](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johnny_l.a/32/1084_2.png) [@Johnny\_L.A](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johnny_L.A)\
**Post date:** [December 18, 2024, 7:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-to-turn-off-highlights-in-excel/1011825/1 "2024-12-18T19:00:47Z")

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Excel has been weird the last couple of days. I don’t know if there was an update to Office 360, of I accidentally turned something on. When I click on a cell, the row and column are highlighted in light green (the cell itself is still white). How do I make it stop doing that?

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**Author:** ![Chisquirrel](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/6bbea6/32.png) [@Chisquirrel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chisquirrel)\
**Post date:** [December 18, 2024, 7:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-to-turn-off-highlights-in-excel/1011825/2 "2024-12-18T19:07:12Z")

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Under the “View” tab, there’s a option to “Focus Cell”. Turn it off.

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**Author:** ![Johnny\_L.A](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johnny_l.a/32/1084_2.png) [@Johnny\_L.A](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johnny_L.A)\
**Post date:** [December 18, 2024, 7:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-to-turn-off-highlights-in-excel/1011825/3 "2024-12-18T19:08:13Z")

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Thanks! Problem solved.

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**Author:** ![Author\_Balk](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/e0b2c6/32.png) [@Author\_Balk](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Author_Balk)\
**Post date:** [December 19, 2024, 4:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-to-turn-off-highlights-in-excel/1011825/4 "2024-12-19T16:36:20Z")

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For the last couple of days mine was doing the same thing. I thought I accidentally clicked on something and hadn’t figured it out.  
So, thank you from me as well for the solution!

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**Author:** ![Johnny\_L.A](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johnny_l.a/32/1084_2.png) [@Johnny\_L.A](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johnny_L.A)\
**Post date:** [December 19, 2024, 6:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-to-turn-off-highlights-in-excel/1011825/5 "2024-12-19T18:45:39Z")

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Hm. It’s still doing the crosshairs thing when I do a Find.

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**Author:** ![mnemosyne](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/c4cdca/32.png) [@mnemosyne](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mnemosyne)\
**Post date:** [December 22, 2024, 3:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-to-turn-off-highlights-in-excel/1011825/6 "2024-12-22T03:50:29Z")

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…I’ve recently worked on something that made me wonder if this feature existed, but not enough to go looking for it.

Depends on the data, I guess!