83
11
When there are very tall cells in Microsoft Excel, trying to scroll via mouse or even via scrollbar (clicking on "<-" "->" pointers) just jumps below to the next cell, hiding the bottom content of the large cell in question.
Is there an option to have Excel scroll smoothly?
So far I found only one way - click middle button on mouse - and scroll smoothly by moving mouse aside.
zmische
Posted 2009-09-28T12:31:22.620
Reputation: 933
33
This is more of a design flaw in Excel than a bug. It's definitely a usability problem as it is super easy to scroll past a cell with it basically never showing in the view.
As much as I hate to suggest this (I hate this feature) you can middle-drag to scroll smoothly. Once you release/click again/move the mouse over top of the origin, Excel will snap the top of the view again.
This same problem is present in Office 2010 under Windows 7.
Charlie
Posted 2009-09-28T12:31:22.620
Reputation: 450
2Charlie, that would make sense if it was impossible to scroll smoothly, but it's not a problem with the rendering engine, because clearly you can scroll smoothly with middle mouse button. It's not like the grid is ridgidly fixed in the upper left and they're just shifting cell contents into that static grid. The middle mouse button smooth scrolling proves that's not the issue. This is simply a design flaw, in that the scrollbars always force it to jump to the next cell. The behavior could easily be switched off, they just don't make it an option. – Triynko – 2014-07-03T20:02:01.490
Triynko, do you have any evidence to support your claim? One of the Mac office devs has/had a blog and wrote about these sorts of issues: http://www.schwieb.com/blog. The smooth scrolling with the middle mouse button may depend on a hack that breaks something like focus. Middle mouse scrolling actually only works vertically, it still skips around when scrolling horizontally. If this would be a simple code change, this would already have been implemented. It's certainly caused by extremely complicated rendering code that can't be cheaply rewritten.
– Charlie – 2014-07-09T00:14:57.507This problem lies in all Excel versions as well as other speadsheet tools I've ever used and it's really annoying – phuclv – 2014-10-24T12:35:11.603
how to do it in libre-office-calc? – Oki Erie Rinaldi – 2016-02-10T08:21:47.617
I would ask another question; this is for Excel. – Charlie – 2016-02-10T18:40:58.567
If you - like me - would like this feature to be implemented, feel free to have a look at the corresponding Excel Feature Request and maybe vote for it. (The Excel team said they would base implementation speed on received votes.)
– Marcus Mangelsdorf – 2017-08-28T12:09:56.307Doesn't work for me. Excel 2010, Windows 7, and middle-dragging still scrolls one line at a time. Better than the default 3 lines at a time that I get with the mousewheel, but still not what I call "smooth". – Fabio says Reinstate Monica – 2017-08-29T16:21:19.057
Fabio, are you using any unusual mouse drivers? Can you capture a screenshot of the cursor when you do this? – Charlie – 2017-08-30T01:40:59.317
3+1 for the solution. How do you middle-click/drag on a mac though? – Geo – 2014-01-29T15:13:52.480
1You might have luck using a PC mouse and making sure nothing is taking over the middle mouse button (like expose/mission control/dashboard) – Charlie – 2014-02-01T00:34:04.373
9I'm genuinely at a loss to why this is a built in feature that cannot be turned off. Fair enough, it might be useful for simple spreadsheets, but users always have large cells that they might want to scroll partly into view using the scroll bars but you can't do it. It's ridiculous! – theyetiman – 2014-04-11T10:57:25.567
Excel's rendering code is highly optimized and extremely old. I imagine it is a total mess and re-writing it is not an option. Since it has snapped from the beginning, it continues to have that restriction. – Charlie – 2014-04-11T20:23:32.873
8
This is a limitation of excel.
2 options...
Jody
Posted 2009-09-28T12:31:22.620
Reputation: 372
14I can't believe Excel and Calc have such a limitation. All my thoughts go to people needing these pieces of software on a daily basis... – m-ric – 2013-03-19T14:22:18.207
1indeed, it's a pain in the ***. – Bakaburg – 2013-10-13T13:33:32.717
7
You won't be able to not scroll by rows, but you can minimize them to one row. Just change the mousewheel setting to 1, as per this link.
If you use the Scroll Lock button then using the arrow keys will move the screen instead of the cursor.
Lance Roberts
Posted 2009-09-28T12:31:22.620
Reputation: 7 895
Scroll lock has the same limitation, unfortunately. – Sean O'Hollaren – 2013-06-18T19:15:44.200
+1 As you said, this does not address the issue and quite frankly renders the mouse wheel useless in other applications, but at least Excel no longer skips rows when I set the number of lines to 1. – cdonner – 2014-05-07T17:25:35.180
2
You can also insert two blank rows between your large rows, then hide the blank rows. This will make excel act as though you changed your mouse line scroll to 1 line but not affect your other applications. This might not solve your entire need (if one large row doesn't even fit on one screen), but it will help a little.
ArasB
Posted 2009-09-28T12:31:22.620
Reputation: 21
0
My solution to this is to zoom out slightly to 90%, this seems to turn off the "feature" in Excel 2016 at least.
Marc
Posted 2009-09-28T12:31:22.620
Reputation: 693
2This doesn't work for me in Excel 2016 on PC. At 90% zoom, Excel still "snaps" to the nearest cell if I let go of the scroll bar when the middle of the cell is lined up with the top of the screen. – Barrie – 2016-08-18T08:14:28.877
This doesn't actually fix it. It just makes the cells small enough that it isn't as annoying. – rolls – 2018-10-15T03:20:56.060
0
You can make this change in Control Panel > Mouse settings.
To change the number of lines that you scroll in Excel:
In Windows 7, mine was set to 3 cells as default, and I was able to change this to 2 (or you can change it to 1 or any number). I guess the only constraint is that this will affect how the mouse works in ALL programmes.
user312181
Posted 2009-09-28T12:31:22.620
Reputation: 11
same answer as Lance Roberts' from 3 years ago – cdonner – 2014-05-07T17:24:47.573
-1
Quick fix: right click on the column header and select:
colemik
Posted 2009-09-28T12:31:22.620
Reputation: 1 414
I assume you meant to click on the row header and select Row Height, but then? Change it? To something smaller? Then I won't see the content of the cell anymore and have gained nothing. – cdonner – 2014-05-07T17:27:55.710
@cdonner This can be done with rows also, yes. The 'gain' is that by decreasing the width of the column it is now (after shrinking) possible to decrease the size of the column further with a mouse (by just dragging the edge of the column) and thus at least partially see/scroll through multiple columns on the screen. The solution doesn't really implement smooth scrolling, that's why I've called it the quick fix. – colemik – 2014-05-07T21:03:27.607
-2
See if you are able to scroll smoothly in other applications with the middle wheel. This will help determine if the problem is with Excel or your mouse.
If you can't scroll smoothly in other programs, you may want to check your mouse driver settings, update the driver, or both.
Zian Choy
Posted 2009-09-28T12:31:22.620
Reputation: 1 394
6-1 for an answer so useless that I would expect to find it on a Microsoft forum, but not here. – cdonner – 2014-05-07T17:23:09.150
5FWIW, this is a usability issue with every version of Excel that I have ever used, and on various OS versions through the years. – Chris O – 2014-07-07T13:17:32.887
I tend to click and drag the vertical scrollbar in this situation. It's not ideal as I have to hold the mouse button down to prevent it jumping around to "snap to cell" while reading, but I find it easier to control than the middle-mouse-button-drag technique. – Glenn Lawrence – 2015-06-11T23:47:35.603
If you - like me - would like this feature to be implemented, feel free to have a look at the corresponding Excel Feature Request and maybe vote for it. (The Excel team said they would base implementation speed on received votes.)
– Marcus Mangelsdorf – 2017-08-28T12:11:39.2031
FYI same issue/bug in OpenOffice calc, see this: http://qa.openoffice.org/issues/show_bug.cgi?id=7722 and this http://user.services.openoffice.org/en/forum/viewtopic.php?f=9&p=86184 It's a nightmare!
– Marco Demaio – 2010-11-11T14:01:09.510its not possible . its bug in excel 2007 if you are using vista – joe – 2009-09-28T13:29:11.020
Yes, I'm on Vista now. And no Fixes available??? – zmische – 2009-09-29T06:53:11.857