Why won’t Excel let me select more than one cell with my mouse? It’s making formatting a real PITA. Any (prompt) suggestions will be greatly appreciated! Thanks, Dopers.
Click and drag.
Hold the left button down and drag it however you want.
At the risk of sounding silly…
Hold down the mouse button and select the range you want.
In more seriousness…
Can you give us more information? Which version? What, exactly, are you trying to do and what happens when you do it?
Zev Steinhardt
Yes, I do know the general idea of how to select multiple cells, Excel is just refusing to cooperate. I am using the Office 2007 version. When I hold down the mouse button and drag, I just get skipped to another individual cell rather than getting them all. Does this make any sense or am I explaining poorly?
Something to try when things go awry.
Save your worksheet. Shut down Excel and start it again. I find that sometimes helps when Excel (or any application) goes a bit wacky.
Zev Steinhardt
Try clicking them individually while holding “Ctrl”.
If you don’t mind me piggybacking, why are certain collumns in this document hidden, and how do I unhide them? It goes A B C D L.
This has been happening the last three times I have used Excel. I have shut it down and restarted it each time. I have also run an Office diagnostics and found nothing wrong. Could it be my mouse that’s having the issue?
Highlight columns D and L, right click and choose Unhide.
Zev Steinhardt
Of course not, Santo. I’m sure you have experience!
It’s certainly a possibility.
Zev Steinhardt
It’s possible one of the keys on your keyboard is stuck. I’ve had this happen before. The same goes for the mouse.
How would I find out if this is the problem, and, more importantly, how would I fix it?
Well, that was simple! And I never would have thought of it myself. Thanks!
I haven’t had this exact problem. Actually it was the opposite. Everything I rolled over suddenly got selected.
I have no idea why but a few toggles later with my scroll lock key, insert key, and my F Lock key (function key toggle may not be on all keyboards) and it freed up.
Other times I shut down, rebooted and it resolved.
I do a lot of heavy data calcs and macros with 2007 and I’ve found it to be temperamental
Just try another mouse or keyboard, and replace if necessary. Simple.
Simple if I had another mouse or keyboard lying around you mean. I just need it to cooperate for another hour or two so I can finish this assignment!
Keyboards often get crumbs in them. Turn it upside down and shake it, bang it around, wack the keys. Normally it’s a tab,shift,ctrl, alt button that causes problems in Excel. Haven’t had much luck with mouse buttons if they fail.