new "Focus Cell" option

[henryg]

This does not seem to work when Freeze Panes/Rows is in use. Such a shame. A sort of work around is to have the data in a table so the top row of the table is visible on scrolling, but its far from ideal and loses its, eg bold, formatting

Any other suggestions?

 

[Joe4]

I had not heard this before, and was excited about the possibility, and I do have Excel 365, but I could not find it anywhere.
Then I found this article: Focus Cell: Keep track of your place in the Excel worksheet grid | Global Excel Summit | Microsoft Excel Conference.

And it says this:

Sadly, I am not an Insider, so I do not have it yet.

But there have been tons of post over the years that show you how to do this using VBA. Here is one:

Highlight the Active Cell, Row, or Column

Office VBA reference topic

learn.microsoft.com

There are many other you can find on the topic with a simple Google search.

Also, it sounds like some Add-Ins may have this functionality too. The first article I referenced above seems to suggest that the Kutools add-in has it.

 

[MARK858]

I had not heard this before,

I only found out about it because my Excel defaulted to it after it updated a while back as the OP says the icon does grey out if Freeze panes is active (I've still not decided if I prefer focus cell or not)

You can also simulate it (almost as the active cell gets highlighted) with Conditional formatting with the formula

=OR(CELL("col")=COLUMN(),CELL("row")=ROW())

but you still need a basic VBA to trigger a calculation or press F9 for it to work

 

[henryg]

Thank you for the replies. Joe4, it's only available in the 365Beta and even then perhaps not all get it at the same time. Unfortunately, neither workaround quite "does it" for me. Now I know the limitation I will unfreeze as necessary, particularly when using tables. I will also only enable it when I specifically want to use i, rather than it being on all the time.

In case of interest, I found out by trial and error that it is possible to get a wider colour range for the highlight (than the standard colours offered) by setting any cell to the desired colour which then that becomes available as a "recent colour" under "focus cell colour". It seems to stick after restarting Excel, and when creating a new workbook or editing an existing one.