Have Excel scroll better when there are large cells.
If there's a really tall or wide cell, Excel jumps to the edge of the cell when scrolling past that area. This is a big pain when, for example:
- trying to position a shape
- Trying to grab the edge of the row or column in order to resize it.
Excel should just scroll normally without jumping.
Oz du Soleil
shared this idea
Thanks everyone for all of the passion about this suggestion! The number of votes has increased greatly in the last couple months and we’re taking notice! We’ve got a bunch of other Excel endpoints behaving this way already and we’re evaluating getting it done in the Windows versions sooner based on the number of votes it gets – so keep the votes coming!
Eric Patterson (Program Manager – MSFT)
510 comments
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PN
commented
There should be an option in the menu to activate or deactivate the "snap to cell" scroll functionality. Then we can turn it off, if we are working with cells, which have lots of text inside.
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Henning Olsen
commented
Fix it NOW!! My company is ready to dump MS office because of this!
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Scott Padgett
commented
This needs to be fixed pronto. Having Excel lock to the nearest row when scrolling is extremely inconvenient. Which developer thought that would be a good idea?
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EM
commented
I can't believe they still haven't fixed this. This is incredibly annoying when trying to scroll through a book with large cells.
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Anonymous
commented
To further assist in frustrating the user, a kludge was apparently put in at some point disallowing row height >546 pixels (409.50 units), foiling user attempts at adapting the zoom level as a crude workaround to compensate for the original limitation, though to M$ credit im guessing that was to fix a worse bug where larger cells could have their resize handles to get utterly lost and perpetually rendered inaccessibly off-screen
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Kirk Barnett
commented
Please fix this... : )
I make a lot of spreadsheets and the scrolling really hurts my eyes and brain.
Screen fatigue sets in way faster the way it pops over and over with the current scrolling. : ( -
DM
commented
Come on MSFT, how hard is this? Nobody wants it to snap to the the next whole page's worth of columns if we've only got a couple columns beyond the viewable page. It's super confusing and we're all sick of it.
FIX IT!
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Roy
commented
The built-in bias to using Excel has to be overcome. For us really old folks, the rough equivalent was pushing buying toward Compaq (and then Gateway, then Dell, largely) ratheer than costly and underpowered IBM PC's. It was summed up for folks thinking of attempting it as "No one ever got fired buying IBM."
1. There has to be a reason to do it or there's no point in broaching the subject at all. So list out the reasons you and others have. Pick the compelling ones. "Excel don't care no more than Honey Badger used ta" is not compelling to the bosses.
Compelling reasons include a noticeable cost or degradation of efficiency that results in identifiable monetary losses OR not being able to satisfy a customer or to even offer a service due to Excel.
2. There has to be an alternative. Maybe more than one, but more means confusion for them. They will get "the bottom line" on alternatives as they apply to the compelling reasons, but are looking to YOU for the decision on what to offer them. To be fair to them, that's their job, not doing the original work.
So go in with a full decision made on one, maybe two alternatives. Connect directly to all the compelling reasons. Show the cost vs. their costs. The bosses think Excel is free. And a huge number of people do come with Excel experience and skills. Yes… "um, to a degree..." but it is Excel high schools teach, and Excel with a lot of Google hits when searching on a problem. They are aware of this, and training has a cost. Ignore it and they'll have to wonder what else you're ignoring.
3. Be clever regarding alternatives. They don't have to be spreadsheets. You might have six compelling cases that DO need addressed but the solution might be to take them out of the spreadsheet world. Could off-the-shelf software address one or more? Would MS's PowerApps or similar solve things? Perhaps a real database? A program written for you? Just a front-end for the Excel data store? Perhaps breaking the problem into parts. Is data acquisition and low-level use is suitable for Excel but the analysis needs PowerApps or a front-end. Does it really require some things be mixed together? Maybe just change the literal problem areas leaving the main body in place.
YOU must figure that out for your presentation and present proper costs and difficulties. Show how your chosen solution not only directly saves money, but is the basis for efficiency that will present opportunities in the future, either altogether new ones, or enhanced current offerings. Avoid utterly correct "it'll pay for itself in 9 months" points: no one believes them anyway, and the costs you will often be looking at here are going to be labor costs. Those people are still going to be working there, just on other things, so the bosses know that money will still be spent anyway. Perhaps show how they can spend the time saved on a particular new capability or two.
Along with front-ends and other bespoke software, off-the-shelf software, and such, consider environments. Not just SharePoint and its ilk, but, as an example, there are programs out there which use regular programming tools and languages, then create spreadsheets for you that accomplish your programming. They might support the 300 most used Excel functions, but on the other hand, reporting of data is usually incredible compared to Excel's capabilities, not to mention bringing together disparate sources. Reporting, by the way, is simply presentation of data and usually can be offered for use as if the user were in the spreadsheet data itself. No need to look for smooth scrolling, data validation, user rights and access... the list goes on. And changes are written back so... Many multi-user problems just go away.
So I'm saying make it a real project to push your point. Do it right, remember bosses are there to approve the well-thought-out work of their subordinates. Not do it themselves. So do it, be right, and a large part of convincing them is accomplished.
Final thought: AVOID offering to trial your solution, especially in bits and pieces. You have the entire overhead of learning the solution well enough to even decide on the best approach, the entire overhead of learning the tools you will use, and then turning all that over to the person who will do the nuts and bolts of it. A nightmare that will have some bug in it that everyone frets over. Showing it working at a colleague's place of employment perhaps, but don't go down in these flames.
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I got a headache
commented
Sorry for the excessive email updates. The "Edit" feature on this does not work very well....
Someone with more Office 365 experience tell me if this would work. If you have Office 365 login and can use a web based Excel app:
-Install an android environment on your PC, like Bluestacks
-Log into Office 365 within Bluestacks
-Launch Excel app
-Scroll smoothlyNot sure how much resolution can be adjusted on an Android environment on PC. Last time I used Bluestacks on PC was years ago and it made everything look huge on my monitor. But, it's just an idea. Maybe someone that knows more than me can complete this idea in a usable fashion.
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Anonymous
commented
This and smooth scrolling works in the mobile (Android) app. Why is the desktop and web app so far behind?
The same is with the arbitrary cell size limits. There is no need for those either, improved scrolling behaviour would eliminate any issues with those. -
Victor Borges
commented
I can see a lot of alternatives from the cost perspective, but aside from that? nah....
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Saajan Patel
commented
To those who are commenting about 'leaving excel' or finding a better 'alternative'.. good luck....
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Anonymous
commented
Does anyone here have any tips for how I might propose an alternative to Excel at the company I work for? After speaking with my colleagues I have a long list of reasons that Excel is costing us time, and a few ideas for alternatives, but the higher ups don't use Excel a lot and might not really know what i am complaining about. How can I get them to see that using this program is hurting their bottom line? Any thoughts are appreciated :D
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Anonymous
commented
WTF!
STILL NO SOLUTION?
I'm switching to another product. If they cant respect and meet their customers needs it's time to take my money elsewhere.Dont worry about fixing this, MS. wont be my problem anymore
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David
commented
I'm with Brad... Is this not a priority? and if so, why?
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Brad
commented
Smooth scrolling please.. why is it taking more than 4 years. Its the 2nd highest voted-for requested feature. How have you started and finished other features with less votes, before this one??
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Anonymous
commented
+1
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s.videtto
commented
+1
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Anonymous
commented
srsly, just how many more years will it take to implement this one??
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Anonymous
commented
It's so sad to see that MS doesn't care about their customers... although this is such a basic feature.