Follow this step by step tutorial to learn how to select multiple cells in excels. Don't forget to check out our site for more free how-to videos!
- our feed - join us on facebook - our group in Google+ Follow this step by step tutorial to learn how to select multiple cells in excels. Before you can enter your worksheet data in Microsoft Office Excel, you must know how to select cells in a worksheet. The cell cursor is a black border that surrounds the active cell (sometimes called the current cell) in a worksheet. Step 1 # selecting multiple cell. Several cells can be selected at once. When multiple cells are selected, the selected cells are indicated with a light, 'baby' blue color. When a single block of cells is selected, a double black line will surround the selection, and all cells except the first one to be selected will be shown in light blue.
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Step # 2 continuous selections. To make a continuous selection of cells, move the white cross mouse cursor pointer to the cell at one corner of the block of continuous cells, click and hold the primary mouse pointer on that cell, drag the pointer to the opposite corner of the block of cells and then release the mouse button. The block of cells will now be selected. The arrow keys can also be used to select a continuous block of cells. To add cells in this manner, first select the cell in one corner of the cell block with the primary mouse button, then hold the Shift key and use the arrow keys to expand the selection block.
Step 3: Discontinuous selection. A discontinuous group of cells can also be selected, by selecting cells or block of cells while holding down the Ctrl key. To select a discontinuous group of cells, first select a cell or a continuous group of cells as explained above, then click and hold down the Ctrl while selecting more cells. All of the cells which are selected while the Ctrl key is held down will be added to the selection. All selected cells will be displayed with a light blue color. Cells can be added individually or as continuous blocks. This selection process is additive with each selected cell added only once so selecting cells twice or more simply adds those cells once to the selection.
I do not recall this exact problem but I have had similar problems on a number of occasions. Like you I had to abort Excel to clear the problem and it told several such failures before I identified the cause. The cause was Excel waiting on a question about the operation I had requested which was hidden behind the main Window.
I have since discovered that getting that hidden question to display can be difficult but is possible. I do not know why, on rare occasions, the question is not on top as it usually is.
Try looking for a hidden question next time this happens. In my situation I had an excel sheet with Conditional Formatting on some cells and for some reason this Conditional formatting was copied a couple of hundred times, probably when I copied the cell the custom formatting for the entire range of cells was copied as well. I had to remove the Custom Formatting on hundreds of cells which took ages as you can't select multiple Rules when deleting them. So manually deleting one rule after the other, while every Delete takes a couple of seconds.well you get the point. Anyway, my Excel sheet is quick again when the Conditional Formatting was reset to only a few Rules.
I have a spreadsheet of Corn prices that covers 20 years - 1000 worksheets. I also have some worksheets at the end showing the results (graphs, etc.) of various scenarios. From time to time I try different things and re-use existing columns on the price worksheets. All of a sudden when I hit ctrl+C (copy) it froze and I got a 'not responding'. One of two things fixed it. I got rid of some of the summary worksheets - now if works. Either: I had hit some Excel limit as far as what it could handle but I don't think that is likely.
What is more likely is my new use of one of the existing columns was an 'IF/THEN' code that returned a text answer rather than a numerical answer. I believe the freezing was due to one of the existing summary sheet items (graphs, etc.) expecting a number field and finding a text field. If your problematic copy-paste workflow is including calculations, ask yourself why you are doing that. Your workflow may need to be revised.
Complex non-plaintext data could be getting in the way. Test this by making a plain-text-only and numbers-only new document, by copying individual columns, pasting into Notepad, copying into columns in the new document.
There may be hidden rows and columns that are getting copied along with the visible portion. There may be hidden data by pivot tables, so that the actual amount of data being transferred is much bigger than expected. If the file size is big, you may be overwhelming the PC. Modern Excel files are actually ZIPped XML files. At one place I worked at, an Excel sheet was causing problems on old PCs, so I tried manually unzipping it (renaming it.zip and using 7Zip to expand it). The 200 MB archive came out to over 2 GB of plaintext.