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]
973 comments
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Ravn
commented
It took MS 5 years to make a plan - 21. september 2020
A god plan is half the job - so estimated it is solved in 2025 -
Dan
commented
is this sorted yet?
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Malcolm
commented
Come on Microsoft, Excel shouldn't have any competing sheets with better functionality. Please make these simple adjustments an option at least.
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Anonymous
commented
I guess that's why everyone's moving to SmartSheet for enterprise. We get ours this week. Didn't realize how much easier and more powerful it could be. Simple things like this. You snooze you lose.
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Kuba
commented
6 years and you are happy to share that you are 'in the planning stages'. Planning stages would take another six years, then initial analysis, technical analysis, development and testing, technical preview, release candidates... Looks like 40 years of work. And there supposed to be cyberpunk in 2077. People would get smooth scrolling in excel instead. It's always something, thanks xD
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Anonymous
commented
Please fix this - or allow an option to disable it... It makes it incredibly difficult to review large spreadsheets when the focus keeps jumping to the top of a cell. What the ****, we have no choice. It makes me crazy.
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Winnipeg Gal
commented
Please fix this - or allow an option to disable it... It makes it incredibly difficult to review large spreadsheets when the focus keeps jumping to the top of a cell.
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Futski
commented
Ryan,
I see that MS changed this to "Planned" status relatively recently. Hopefully it's in the works now, but I would expect that a change of this magnitude might take a while to get fixed because it probably goes directly to the core of Excels screen drawing engine.You can always monitor what's coming by watching the changes in the Beta Channel. Link here: https://insider.office.com/en-us/releasenotes/windows/fast/windows-beta-channel-release-notes
Side Note: Check out the new LAMDA function released to Beta Channel on Dec 4. I think there are a lot of people that will like that one. It's mentioned in the link above.
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Ryan
commented
It just sucks when you're using large (or just long, in my case) cells, and you try to view a certain cell but it snaps to the edge of the next one over. Scrolling by pixel instead of by cell would be a great addition.
Thanks for your time,
Ryan -
TF
commented
I can confirm that it is NOT fixed for the current desktop version of Microsoft Excel Version 2012 Build 13530.20376, published on January 12, 2021 (part of Office 365).
Maybe Kevin can tell us the specific version he is using?
I am really angry that Microsoft has not fixed this for so long. It is really an annoyance!
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Anonymous
commented
This does not appear to be fixed in the Windows desktop version of Excel as of v2011:13426.20404 released on December 21, 2020. There is smooth scrolling on Mac and the web versions (which is also used in Teams on Windows which is really just a web page anyway).
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Steve
commented
I note from Kevin's comment below that this is fixed. If so, can you advise me if there is a need to change any settings within the Excel Desktop application because I still have this problem.
This feature has been available on the 365 web version for sometime but I've yet to get the same feature on my desktop version, which is up to date.
Thanks
Steve -
Kevin
commented
I think this is fixed. Thank you!!!
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Cara Gilmore
commented
Please soon! this is so annoying!
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GB
commented
You don't yet have a target date????? The code can't be that complicated!!!!!
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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