Excel help please

This is REALLY embarassing...I usually avoid Microsoft programmes on my mac, but I HAD to use an Excel spreadsheet, created by someone else and modify it at times. It has admittedly worked fine for a year...

But now, for some reason, my cursor has become the little grabby hand, and I cannot figure out how to get the arrow back.

Cursor normal on all other programmes...even on other Excel spreadsheets. I have closed and reopened, I have checked to see if I had somehow made it read only, Right clicked.......everything.....Tried to save as another name....still no cursor....HELP PLEASE!

Thanks

The standard Excel cursor is a solid cross symbol (or so I thought). 2x-click a cell, and it changes to a standard blinking text cursor.

Go to your top menu bar > View > Toolbars and see that only the top two choices are checked. Or, as may be the case, uncheck whatever might be in addition to those two.

In trying to replicate what you're experiencing, I note that the 'grab hand' only comes into play when I select a cell, occupied or empty, and move the mouse position slightly to the lower edge.

didn´t help

I tried to do what you said and I could check the tools top two and so on, but I still cannot get rid of the grab hand(!) If I double click on a cell with the grabhand, I get a submenu...but nothing there can take the grabby hand away! When you replicated, were you able to go back to the standard cursor from the grab hand..and how? It IS frustrating and I thank you for the assistance so far!

With Numbers in iWork 08 and 09 one can import excel and export in excel format so PC users can load it - Any chance of getting your hands on either of those to do your work. That way you avoid the grabby hands.

challenger said:

When you replicated, were you able to go back to the standard cursor from the grab hand..and how?

Click to expand...

Yes, by moving the mouse away. In other words, the change in cursor/hand/pointer is dependent on positioning over a cell.

A Suggestion: Select All from the troublesome Excel document, Copy, and then Paste to a New spreadsheet (a Workbook I think it's called) in your Mac's version of Excel.

Hopefully the Mac's Excel protocols will then apply.

more strange

Well.....long story short...I managed to get everything chosen and moved it to a new document Worksheet. Discovered something even stranger in the process.....the grabby hand was limited to SECTIONS of the spreadsheet! when I navigated past a certain line, it turned into a cursor, then back to a grabby hand when moving back.

Thanks for all the suggestions. Next step is to go into iWork and see how the imports exports go. If that is OK for the PC-bound recipients...that will be the final solution!

Thanks!

That suggests that those specific cells were locked, perhaps by VBA, which would explain why you couldn't do anything about it.