Clever s*ds - help required please!!

[kathlyn]

[quote="giraffe"]Sometimes it gets hot (If I'm wearing a skirt! It helps if I push the skirt down between my legs, so that it isn't on a flat surface, and the air can circulate) but it barely feels warm when the problems occur, so I don't think it is overheating.


Try getting a lap tray which will give you a hard surface under the laptop. The beans in the underside make it comfortable to fit your lap.

[Bunnylump]

Can someone please tell me how to stop flipping Excel filling in colour in cells that I haven't told it to fill colour in please? This happens all the time and just made me really mess a puzzle up.

[Redfraggle]

Do you have it default set to do this?

[Bunnylump]

No. What I mean is, when I fill in colour in certain cells, Excel seems to take it into its own head to fill in random cells which I haven't asked it to fill in. It's nothing to do with the version of excel I have - it used to do it with the last one I had as well. Usually I notice when it does it, but sometimes I don't. It drives me absolutely mental.

[Laura]

I have no idea. I would also like an answer to that!!!

[LAT]

Are you autofilling data, or inserting rows or columns next to cells that are already coloured? Cos it will do it then. Otherwise I'm not sure why it does it.

[Scurra]

Are you trying to fill multiple cells at once? If you are holding CTRL it selects multiple cells.
Maybe you have something that thinks CTRL is being pressed?

[Laura]

Mine did it when I was recording how far I was walking each day. It was basically just a long list of distances next to dates, but I highlighted days when I had walked a lot or not very much for a specific reason. There was no pattern or logic to it, and I was just typing in one piece of info a day.

[Bunnylump]

What happens is that I fill one cell with colour, then move on to a different cell (not necessarily next to it) and type something in it. Before I know it, Excel has coloured the cell the same colour as the other one without me asking it to. I never have CNTRL held down (I thought of that) and it doesn't ALWAYS do it, just sometimes. It's more likely to do it if I'm moving to an adjacent cell, but not always. When it first happened I though I was hallucinating. But it does it with every version of Excel I have ever used, even on the work computers.

[Scurra]

Yes, that's the secret Bunny Conspiracy setting. Because it doesn't happen to anyone else, but it happens to you on multiple computers.

(All I can say is that if it happens on different machines it must be something to do with the way you do things. I've never heard of anything quite like it.)

[giraffe]

Does it colour them purple?

[Bunnylump]

I refer the honourable jester to

Mine did it when I was recording how far I was walking each day. It was basically just a long list of distances next to dates, but I highlighted days when I had walked a lot or not very much for a specific reason. There was no pattern or logic to it, and I was just typing in one piece of info a day.

Ha ha. No, it colours them in whatever colour I have been using last. It never does it without me having coloured a square in previously though. They don't just randomly pop up in spreadsheets. Could it be something to do with navigating from cell to cell using the arrow keys?

[giraffe]

Isn't it quicker to click the cell you want to be in?

[LAT]

I can't really tell without seeing when/where it's doing it.
I've had things like that happen but usually when moving straight from a coloured cell to an adjacent one. One way round is to do all the colouring after you have entered all the data.

[eirian]

it does it to me too, Bunny.
I put info in lines, and then shade the line in when I've transferred the info over to another doc.
And then, when I'm filling in the next line, if the line above has already been shaded, it'll shade a selection of the cells in the next line. Curiously, it won't shade all of them.... (I use tab to move between the cells)

I suspect it's just Microsoft Office's 'helpfulness'. Now, in Word I've worked out how to switch off most of it, but I can't find the off switch in Excel.

So, Bunny, I can't help, but it's certainly a wider-spread problem than the Jester understands.

[MBH]

Isn't it quicker to click the cell you want to be in?

Not really - by the time my hand's gone to the mouse I could have stepped or tabbed most places

Sounds like some auto-formatting 'help' as has been mentioned. Maybe a look in the 'Tools->Options' to see what boxes are ticked? Anything saying Auto----- might be suspect.

My usual rules of Microsoft Office don't fit with puzzle creators, but I always tell people to type everything they need to type THEN make it look good I can understand why you might be doing things differently though.

[Scurra]

but I always tell people to type everything they need to type THEN make it look good

So do I. Content and Layout are two different things (and Windows has to take a lot of responsibility for confusing people into thinking they are the same thing.) But I don't think it's Layout that people are talking about here; it's about highlighting a cell or cells in order to indicate that they have been dealt with or need to be dealt with.

[Bunnylump]

Yes, exactly that. And when I'm using it, I need to use it as I go along, or I forget things.

And the version of Excel I am using is "Excel stupidly annoying" which doesn't have a "tools" option.

[Bunnylump]

I've just realised that my laptop doesn't have javascript. I've tried googling and there is a free java download. But when I click on it I'm getting warnings that "this type of file can harm your computer". How do I know if it's a safe site?

[Scurra]

Welcome to the world of the lowest common denominator. Because there are stupid people out there who don't think to check where they are downloading files from (and sometimes even carry on doing so even though they have been warned!), the rest of us have to be treated as though we are equally stupid.
No, obviously you don't know if it is safe. But you don't know if crossing the road is safe either unless you do sensible things first.

Oh, and just to confuse you some more, "Javascript" and "Java" are two entirely different things that have nothing much in common. I imagine you do actually mean "Java". In which case, downloading it from java.com is going to be perfectly fine.