Forum Discussion

bhavishya's avatar
bhavishya
Copper Contributor
Sep 26, 2026

Two-finger touchpad swipe doesn't scroll the sheet tab strip in Excel (works fine everywhere else)

Hi all,

 

I'm running into an odd, very specific touchpad issue in Excel and wanted to check if others have found a workaround.

 

Setup:

- Lenovo ThinkPad T490, Windows 11

- Microsoft 365 Excel (desktop)

- Precision touchpad

 

The issue:

Two-finger horizontal swipe scrolling works perfectly everywhere else — browser, Word, File Explorer, and even inside the Excel worksheet grid itself (scrolling columns left/right works fine).

 

However, the same two-finger swipe does NOT scroll the sheet tab strip at the bottom of the workbook when there are more tabs than fit on screen. I have to click the small navigation arrows (◄ ◄| |► ►) one at a time instead, which is slow with 20+ sheets.

 

I tested this in a blank new workbook and in Excel Safe Mode (excel /safe) — same result both times, so it doesn't seem to be a corrupted file or an add-in. Worksheet content scrolling works fine in both cases; only the tab strip itself doesn't respond to the swipe gesture.

 

For comparison, on an HP laptop I tested, the same gesture does scroll the tab strip, so I suspect it might come down to how HP's touchpad driver translates gestures vs. the generic Windows Precision Touchpad driver on the ThinkPad, but I'm not certain.

 

Has anyone found a way to get two-finger swipe to scroll the sheet tabs specifically, either through an Excel setting, a touchpad driver setting, or a third-party remapping tool? Ctrl+Page Up/Down and the tab list popup work as an alternative, but I'd prefer swipe if there's a way to enable it.

 

Thanks in advance!

excel
office 365

1 Reply

  • LauraBennett's avatar
    LauraBennett
    Brass Contributor
    Sep 29, 2026

    Your tests point to how Excel’s sheet-tab strip handles the touchpad input, rather than a workbook or add-in problem. Scrolling the worksheet grid successfully doesn’t guarantee that the separate tab-strip control handles the same gesture.

    There isn’t a documented Excel setting to enable two-finger scrolling specifically for sheet tabs. The HP comparison is useful, but it doesn’t establish a driver difference unless both machines also have the same Excel build.

    The most useful next steps are:

    1. Compare File > Account > About Excel on both laptops, including the full build number. If they differ, test again on matching builds before changing touchpad settings.
    2. On the ThinkPad, check Lenovo Vantage/System Update for the recommended touchpad/input updates for the T490. If the issue started after an input-driver update, consider rolling back that update instead. Don’t install the HP driver or force a different touchpad driver.
    3. If the builds match and the behaviour still differs, report that comparison through Help > Feedback in Excel. Include that it reproduces in Safe Mode and affects only the sheet-tab strip.

    For remapping, Windows’ built-in touchpad settings don’t let you assign a custom action to a two-finger swipe only when the pointer is over Excel’s sheet tabs. Some tools can map gestures to Ctrl+Page Up/Down, but that switches the active worksheet rather than scrolling the tab strip, and may interfere with normal worksheet scrolling.

    So there isn’t a reliable switch to recommend here. Matching the Excel builds and checking Lenovo’s supported input driver is the best way to narrow down whether this is Excel behaviour or device-specific gesture handling.