Tabs in Excel Online worksheet move unexpectedly

[tstrueby]

We use a shared Excel Online worksheet that is concurrently accessed by approx. 50 users.  The tabs are all named by date and we keep about 3 months of dates available at any time.  Periodically, the current date's tab will move for no reason to somewhere random (could be in an earlier or later date tab position).  The user's get confused when they are trying to find the current date and have to hunt through all the tabs to find it.  We then have to manually drag it back to its correct place in the tab timeline.  No one can recreate the problem.  Is there a setting we can turn on to activate tab locking?  Or has there been a problem reported in the past that a fix exists for?  Thanks in advance for your help.... 

[#2]

@jimluck I use a MacBook pro 2014. If I just touch the trackpad (to select a worksheet) the tabs then move order, however when I firmly press the trackpad the worksheet I want is selected but the tabs are fixed in place. I hope that helps. 

[#3]

@awilcoxThis is the solution! If you click on a tab just one time and then move your mouse pointer to another tab, you'll see a small "move" arrow. Wherever you click, it will move your tab to this location. If you don't want your tab to move, you must click your original tab one more time. Now, when you move your mouse pointer to another tab, you'll see that there is no "move" arrow this time. Thanks!

[#4]

Thank you!!!

[#5]

@ThomasVarshal 

I have spotted this too, you can also click on the relevant tab slightly longer to select it.
But neither of these options is a "solution" per se.
Surely the default behaviour when you click on a tab should be that it activates that tab for viewing, as is the case in the offline version. 
Why on earth would MS make this change?? It's counter-intuitive

[#6]

@jackstraxxI agree that the current behavior is not ideal. I don't remember having this issue before; was there a recent update that introduced this?

[#7]

Yes, I think this works.   Not a double-click.  But a "good-bye" click when you are leaving a tab to go to another.   If you double-click (two clicks in quick succession) that brings up the rename screen.  So, one click to view a sheet.  Another, separate click later to leave that sheet.   Think of the second click as either driving a nail into it to hold it down or as saying good-bye to it so it doesn't follow you.   

It's funny that this only became a problem for me yesterday, after using Excel online for 3 months in a multi-page worksheet.   Until yesterday, pages stayed where I put them without having to click a second time to nail them down or say good-bye.   Then yesterday -- same workbook, same computer, same ISP, same browser, same me, using it all in the same way -- they started moving all over the place unexpectedly.

Thanks for the workaround.

I have gone back to Microsoft chat support and this time insisted that they escalate the problem, successfully fending off their blaming of the browser, the ISP, etc. and resisting their suggestions that I switch to the desktop version.  They gave me a case number and promised higher level technicians would try to come up with a fix.

[#8]

The bug is gone (for me at least). Looks like MS solved the issue.

[#9]

@realvadim My tabs are still moving around ... my team (about 36 people) just aren't going to reliably disciplined to carefully click in and click out exactly the right way to prevent movement.  Sigh.

[#10]

@jmd509 

Sorry to hear that.  Mine are behaving themselves today, without the second clicks.

[#11]

I think it was a bug and the fixes are being rolled out. Seems a lot of us are seeing them no more.

[#12]

Mine continue to behave themselves.   I hit another problem, and I don't know if it had anything to do with setting the stage for the perigrinating pages problem -- my workbook hit a size that triggered a warning from Microsoft that the workbook was almost too big.   Mine is an order system that breaks orders down into products and products into parts, generates a pick list of parts and updates the parts inventory by subtracting parts as they are ordered by customers.   The accumulation of orders makes it grow (each order is a page).  So I had to give it a fresh start, saving it with a new name and deleting all the orders to date, after creating one fictitious order consisting of all the parts ordered to date so that the running total would be accurate in the new workbook.  Then came the question of how to delete 200 pages without having to do 200 separate delete operations.   The solution was to download it to desktop, which has the functionality to delete a range of pages by highlighting the first one in the range, holding down the shift key and highlighting the last one in the range and then hitting delete -- something you can't do online.  Then I uploaded it back to the online version. @CScott20 

[#13]

@jimluck I'm happy to report that my tabs are back to working properly.

[#14]

Being able to cite this thread in my contact with Microsoft was probably key in getting them to escalate it and do something about it.  

[#15]

@Sergei Baklan We have a smaller organization and we are having the exact same issue with tabs moving.  we only have about 5 people in a document at once and unless we lock the document, tabs move randomly.  Highly irritating because having to unlock and password protect each tab to work in them isn't efficient. 

[#16]

Not just limited to Chrome. I'm using office in Edge (because I think I'm going to have some sort of experience using MS office within MS browser?). Still does it. I say Excel bug - er - quirk...

[#17]

Agreed. Definitely NOT kept in alphabetical order.

[#18]

Only works sometimes. I've done both and I thought the solution was exactly as you said. But I am "clicking" the tabs and the same "reordering" is happening whether clicking or just tapping the track pad.

[#19]

@ThomasVarshalOh my goodness, you are absolutely correct!!! AND, this is absurd default behavior!

Yes, so when you click a tab, it auto activates the "move" arrow. Clicking the tab again deactivates the move arrow.

It should be the EXACT OPPOPSITE. Clicking once should do nothing more than select the tab, period, end of action. If I want to move it I can manually drag it, or Microsoft could make it optional that if a tab is clicked a second time, THEN it activates the move arrow.

Thank you for discovering this!!!

[#20]

So, I discovered something. This may have been fixed and you just don't know it.

I noticed that for one of my files the tabs were jumping everywhere, just as we are saying. I noticed I had a newer file where that behavior was NOT happening.

So I closed the document where it WAS happening and reopened it and now it's NOT happening.

So one of two things. Either it was fixed, but I wasn't seeing it (you aren't seeing it), because the file is perpetually open, 24 hours a day, so that "instance" of Excel is not current and fixed with whatever patch MS issued.

The other option is there is some sort of hotkey command that activates the move feature. And everyone on this thread (including myself of course), somehow magically stumbled upon that hotkey to activate the move feature.

I'm going to opt for scenario A, that the current workbook that's open just needs to be closed and reopened with the latest update/patch.

[#21]

@JSMCA 

Seriously have to say how helpful it is to have this chat option. We all thought we were crazy and the only ones that were experiencing this "moving tabs" deal.  

Anyways, super helpful to have a chat like this.  Thanks everyone for your input!