Excel — Help! My arrow keys stopped moving the active cell.
Have you ever been working hard in Excel and suddenly you can’t use the arrows to move the active cell? How long do navigate with your mouse before you give up and Google for help?
Here’s what happened and how you can fix it.
It’s likely that you have inadvertently enabled a little-known feature of Excel called Scroll Lock. Probably a rogue click on somewhere on your keyboard and now you’re stuck.
Every keyboard is different and but you should be able to find it near the top of your keyboard — sometimes labeled “ScrLk”.
If you can’t find it another way is to use the On-screen Keyboard.
To access the On-screen Keyboard, follow these steps:
- Click on Start and go to Settings. Alternatively, just type “Settings” into the Search bar next to your Start Button.
2. From the Settings menu click on Ease of Access. Alternatively, just type in “Ease of Access” on the Settings search bar.
3. Select On-screen keyboard from the results.
4. Activate the On-screen keyboard with the slider button to the right or On position
5. This will open the keyboard and you can easily turn off the Scroll Lock (ScrLk) by mousing over and clicking the on-screen ScrLk button.
6. Once you are back to normal navigation in your Excel file — you can close the on-screen keyboard by clicking on the Top Right “X”.
Good luck with your Scroll Lock misadventures. At least you will know what happened when suddenly your arrow keys stop working in Excel.
