Active cell highlight missing

[ebaro383]

I am a very advanced Excel user so this is a new one for me.

When I open any spreadsheet (new or already populated) the black box that normally frames the active cell is missing (showing which cell you have selected). Likewise when I 'select all' the sheet does not become shaded.

In addition:

Can not fill series
Can not change cell format (specifically to show Currency or Accounting w/$ symbol)

And I am sure there is much more that I have not found yet. I have not seen a single thread on this topic anywhere on the internet.

Help!

 

[Jonmo1]

Welcome to the board..

is the sheet or the book protected?
Tools - Protection - Unprotect Sheet/Book

Was the file read only when you opened it? were you prompted for a password?

 

[ebaro383]

Hi thanks!

Not protected, no individual cells protected, no password required. File was not read-only, and is not a shared workspace.

These are sheets that I use on a regular basis. This just showed up today and is specific to my machine.

 

[ebaro383]

I tried the classic fix of restarting my computer... yea, that fixed it. Go figure. Still don't know what happened.

 

[CJCottell]

Has anyone else come across this and been able to fix it. I've been running a large piece of code and it always fails at the same point but for no discernible reason. The code repeats and works perfectly the other 19 iterations but seems to fall down when selecting ranges!

 

[vgr]

Me! But i noticed this only when i switched between workbooks for formulas!

 

[DonFL]

Has anyone else come across this and been able to fix it. I've been running a large piece of code and it always fails at the same point but for no discernible reason. The code repeats and works perfectly the other 19 iterations but seems to fall down when selecting ranges!

I have a customer which is using 2010 and having this issue on a daily basis. They are rebooting every night, but when they use the spreadsheet the following day the issue returns, but changes from day to day. The first time they showed the issue to me it was not placing borders around columns D-G when they selected a row, then the next time it's a different set of columns. I've not seen it duplicate the issue for the same set of columns. Nor do the unbordered columns remain the same throughout the day. What's odd is if the user Alt/Tab's to a different window, then returns back to the workbook, the selected cells will display the proper borders until the active cell is changed. The workbook contains 2 worksheets, 1 macro, and one pivot table. The largest worksheet only contains approximately 150 row and makes use of 12 columns. When I bring the workbook onto my 2013 system I find no issues. Have searched the internet for a resolution but have had no luck. This thread is the closest I've found to others that have had a similar issue. Any ideas, thoughts, or suggestions would be appreciated. Thank you in advance for your communications.

 

[fesoua]

I have a customer which is using 2010 and having this issue on a daily basis. They are rebooting every night, but when they use the spreadsheet the following day the issue returns, but changes from day to day. The first time they showed the issue to me it was not placing borders around columns D-G when they selected a row, then the next time it's a different set of columns. I've not seen it duplicate the issue for the same set of columns. Nor do the unbordered columns remain the same throughout the day. What's odd is if the user Alt/Tab's to a different window, then returns back to the workbook, the selected cells will display the proper borders until the active cell is changed. The workbook contains 2 worksheets, 1 macro, and one pivot table. The largest worksheet only contains approximately 150 row and makes use of 12 columns. When I bring the workbook onto my 2013 system I find no issues. Have searched the internet for a resolution but have had no luck. This thread is the closest I've found to others that have had a similar issue. Any ideas, thoughts, or suggestions would be appreciated. Thank you in advance for your communications.

I was fighting whole morning with very similar issue to the one described, so hopefully I will be able to help.
My spreadsheet has 2 sheets (one main one and one very hidden for certain users only). Both sheets are vba password protected and users can change only certain cells (only on the main sheet though, very hidden one is just to capture and save the changes that have been made in the main one - hope this makes sense).
On the main sheet only column B and E can be changed (rest is locked). I realised that the cell highlight (as in the thick green border) is disappearing each time I input data. You can still see where the cursor is because the row and column numbers are coloured in grey (i.e. cell B6 - B from the top and 6 from the side are grey, but the cell has no frame around it).
I was trying everything from activecell.active, to trying to get active cell value and set different background (so the user would know where is he typing), but it was still bothering me why is this happening.
I have transferred everything to the new sheet and started from scratch. The problem was that the very hidden sheet protection did not enable to select unlocked cells (seems like even though the main sheet had it ticked the other one overruled it).
Conclusion: I have changed very hidden sheet protection and it is enabling selection of unlocked cells (because I don't want people to change anything there, I made all cells locked anyway). Somehow (not too sure how this is related to the main sheet) main sheet works in the way I want it - active cell is always framed as normal.

Hope this helps .

 

[Krulle1000]

Hello,

I noticed the same issue with my workbook. My Workbook opens with Sheet2. The cells on this sheet had no more green border around the active cell.
All my 5 sheets are protected but only Sheet4 is with the 'Select locked cells' not allowed.
I could solve the issue by allowing the "Select locked cells" again for Sheet4. As of then the active cells in Sheet2 were marked again with a green border.
If you want to keep the 'Select locked cells' feature for your sheet(s) you should specify explicitly the 'EnableSelection = xlNoRestrictions' for your other sheet(s). At least that worked for me.

Example below
Private Sub Workbook_Open()
Sheet1.Protect "test", UserInterfaceOnly:=True
Sheet2.Protect "test", UserInterfaceOnly:=True, DrawingObjects:=False, Contents:=True,
Scenarios:=True
Sheet2.EnableSelection = xlNoRestrictions
Sheet2.Activate
End sub

 

[Kubco]

Hi,

I noticed similar issue. When I protect worksheet from API with

sheet.Protect password:="pass", userinterfaceonly:=True, AllowFormattingColumns:=True, AllowFormattingRows:=True, AllowDeletingRows:=True

With sheet
     .EnableSelection = xlUnlockedCells
     .EnableOutlining = True
End With

the green border of active cell disappear.

What solved this issue in my case is to „deactivate“ and activate the sheet (e.g. activate another sheet and back to original sheet) or just click somewhere outside excel window and back to excel.