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
I’m happy to let you know that we are in the planning stages to make Excel for Windows scroll without jumping to the edge of the cell so you’ll be able to scroll smoothly. We don’t yet have a target date, but wanted to tell you about our plans.
We appreciate all the votes and comments supporting this suggestion.
Thanks – Steve K [Excel]
958 comments
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Futski
commented
I'm gonna play devils advocate here and say that Snap to Cell was likely a design decision many, many, many, many years ago. Probably going all the way back to the initial design of Excel. I don't remember, but 10 to 1 odds that DOS era Lotus 1-2-3 was also Snap to Cell. That goes back to a time when large text cells was not supported. You could put text in the cells, but as I remember there was a size limit, 256 characters comes to mind. So large cell scrolling was never a consideration back then, and neither was word wrapping. This meant a row was a only one line high. So no need for smooth scrolling. And to top it off, the computers back then weren't powerful enought to provide a good experience with smooth scrolling.
Fast forward several decades, and MS never bothered to update their design to include smooth scrolling with Large cells. But it's time for this to happen because spreadsheets have become so much more than they used to be in the old days. The started as number crunchers, plain and simple. But today, some people even use them as word processors, who knows why, by they do.
MS, we understand the long history of Snap to Cell. But it's time for a change to happen. Sooner than later please.
Side note, Does anyone else remember Lucid 3-D spreadsheet? It's was very revolutionary for it's time. I created some really nice stuff using it, stuff Lotus couldn't do. I guess I'm dating myself, huh...
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Spart
commented
Considering that this has been an issue since at least 2007, and that it does work with middle mouse button, I can't say I'm impressed.The "planning" stage should have been a decision to enable this behavior in the settings more than ten years ago. This really just shows how long and slow the corporate decision making process is.
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corey
commented
@Futski - Yeah... at least this issue is probably simpler in Excel desktop apps (just use/toggle the appropriate OS UI stuff), since this isn't an issue (scroll wheel vs ctrl+scroll wheel) in most other Windows apps... I have no idea how this is done on Macs.
With Web apps like Sheets, there's all the UI interactions with different web browsers on the presentation side (IE5???) vs the HTML presentation stuff.
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Futski
commented
@Corey, so what you're saying is that MS is not the only spreadsheet with a smooth scrolling issue.
Go figure. -
corey
commented
I just happened to be playing around in Google Sheets. And it's pretty Excel "feature-compliant" too in this area.
FWIW, someone has asked about Google Sheets being able to do smooth scrolling:
https://support.google.com/docs/thread/10891334?hl=en -
Anonymous
commented
One of these days when you are in your 90s your great grandson will be showing you his new data entry job and you will notice the scrolling on excel is finally smooth.
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I got a headache
commented
I highly(!!!) doubt we'll get a release date ahead of the actual release.
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MR
commented
Any word on when this will be complete? It's SUPER annoying!
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I got a headache
commented
Unfortunately, I imagine MS will only implement the fix on future versions of Excel vs including it as a feature update. I'm sure they'll use any means they can to get people to upgrade to the latest version. ($$$)
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Michiel
commented
Thank you for letting us know that it will be implemented somewhere in the future. It has been driving me mad for years and I often try to find a solution, so I'm really really glad that it is finally implemented.
I do think that it should have been a thing from the start, so I don't know whether I should be angry or thankful. I think I'm both at the same time. Well, better late than never. :)
Thank you for finally working on fixing the scroll problem :D -
I got a headache
commented
@Tim - LOL, you must be new around here.
Seriously, though... It's not something we'll ever know. And it will likely be a long time. It took 5 years just for MS to put this on their planning map. Software dev is notoriously slow, and MS makes normal dev times look like ludicrous speed. "They've gone plaid!" ;P
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Tim
commented
When is this coming?
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Scott
commented
It is finally in planning phase! I never thought I would live to see the day. Seriously though... please make sure it is easy to toggle between the two (smooth and snap), or otherwise configure in the options. Smooth should be the default for mouse scroll wheel, middle mouse button click and drag, scroll bar, etc. Snap is default for arrow keys.
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Shawn Lewis commented
Lol, my solution to the problem is to buy a 49" super-wide monitor and never make sheets where I have to scroll down.
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asdf
commented
5 _Y E A R S_ LATER.
_J U S T_ STARTED DEV. (!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!)
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Futski
commented
@Steve K [Excel] - I know you updated the status of this suggestion (and many others) very recently. Reading thru recent comments, you can see how little faith the super user base has when it comes to the efforts and results of previous Excel team owners.
I truly hope you you can turn this around and restore our faith in MS by listening to our suggestions and delivering on updates in a timely manner. Frequent updates to "Planned" changes will go along way restoring that faith and the goodwill of MS.
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eh
commented
I hope my grandson will have this awesome feature
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Leo CM
commented
5 years later....
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Anonymous
commented
This would be a big help, I keep skipping rows when presenting to clients
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Microsoft = slowest company ever. unuserfriendly. like the stupid path limit.
