Is the switching open workbooks on its own while working in one workbook going to continue?

Copper Contributor

Working out of several workbooks when all the sudden you entering numbers and it switches workbooks on it own.. is this ever going to be fixed?

1 Reply

@thetxrider wrote:  Working out of several workbooks when all the sudden you entering numbers and it switches workbooks on it own.. is this ever going to be fixed?

 

If there is a common problem and it is needing to be fixed, it would begin with a lot clearer description of what's happening, i.e., what exactly are the symptoms, where does it happen (and where does it not happen), when does it happen (and when does it not happen), how often, how severe, etc.

 

But given that, around the world as I write this, and as you wrote your question, there are thousands (perhaps millions) of users of Excel working with several workbooks open, entering numbers in one -- and apparently NOT experiencing the same thing--the probability that Excel needs fixing on this issue is pretty small. Very close to zero.

 

So, let me share my own experience and then ask you a question or two:

  • Occasionally when I'm working with multiple workbooks open and go to enter a number or formula in one, having come from another, I've noticed that things go awry. As in, it seems that my cursor has jumped back to the former workbook/spreadsheet. Why??!!
    • What I've noticed, when that annoying thing happens, is that invariably it happens because I had inadvertently placed my cursor in a cell containing a formula in spreadsheet A before moving my attention over to spreadsheet B, and Excel quite reasonably interpreted this move as my intending to reference a cell or range in B in that formula/function in A. And so it goes back to A to help me complete the formula/function there.
      • Is it possible that this is what's happening in your case?
  • If not, could you please describe more precisely, more fully, the phenomenon that you are raising in your question. What are you doing, what had you been doing just before, what's the general nature of the spreadsheets/workbooks....my guess would be that it doesn't happen ALL the time--as noted above, it would be happening with millions of other users if so--so the key here is to find out what precisely is going on when it does happen.

 

You see, just as a doctor needs a very precise and detailed set of symptoms in order to diagnose accurately, the same is true in getting to the bottom of an alleged problem with Excel (or any other piece of software). And, frankly, it's extremely unlikely that Excel itself is going to be the culprit when a user is doing something so prosaic as filling in numbers in one of several workbooks open at the same time.