Tabbing Between Unprotected Cells Is Interrupted in a Protected Sheet

[leslyons]

I've used Excel for years, but have never run into this situation. I have an Excel spreadsheet I've created for my fellow workers to use to select items and then the sheet will do the calculations. All of my formula cells are protected, and the "fill in the blanks" cells are unprotected. I've probably got about 50 unprotected cells in the worksheet. When I protect the sheet, on the Protect Sheet window the top button "Protect worksheet and contents of locked cells" is checked, as is the next two options in this window under "Allow all users of this worksheet to:". These two options that I always check are "Select locked cells" and "Select unlocked cells." This works fine for most of my sheets. This allows users to see the formulas, but not change them, and they fill in the unprotected cells of their choosing. But on this sheet, after tabbing through 66 of the unlocked cells, it just stops, even though there are 54 more unprotected cells below this. If I manually move my cursor to the next unprotected cell and click inside it, it will then allow me to tab through a few more unprotect cells until it stops again, and I have to repeat the manual procedure to continue. It's like I am moving to a new sheet each time I get stopped and have to manually move to a new section.

I'm stumped. I've searched high and low on the internet and can't find anyone who has identified this issue, why it occurs, and how to solve it. I am a novice at using this forum so I don't see a way to attach my spreadsheet for you to play around with … if someone can tell me how, I'll happily attach it. Thanks in advance for your help!

 

[Fluff]

That's not something that I've ever come across, but do you have any merged cells?

You cannot upload files to the site, but you can upload to somewhere like OneDrive, Dropbox, GoogleDrive, mark for sharing & then post the link to the thread.

 

[leslyons]

That's not something that I've ever come across, but do you have any merged cells?

You cannot upload files to the site, but you can upload to somewhere like OneDrive, Dropbox, GoogleDrive, mark for sharing & then post the link to the thread.

Fluff - thanks for the reply. I think you may have hit on it. It does stop at a merged cell and won't move past that, unless I do it manually. Then it stops at the next merged cell. Will this feature not work with merged cells? Is there a workaround?

 

[Fluff]

Is there a workaround?

Yes, remove all merged cells.
They are an abomination & should be avoided like the plague.
They interfere with sorting, filtering, some formulae and VBA hates them.