Big White Cross cursor in Excel

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Win 11, MS Office 2021

Yesterday, while working in Excel, my arrow cursor turned into a big white cross – like the Red Cross logo – it spans about 2 excel rows in my spreadsheets. I actually found a work-around but it involves running a VB Macro in a separate spreadsheet, then closing the spreadsheet while leaving Excel open, and opening one of my spreadsheets. Here are my notes if anyone is interested:

Create a spreadsheet “CursorFix.xlsm” (has to be macro-enabled – xlsm)

1. Enable the Developer tab on the Excel Ribbon and click on it.
2. Click the Visual Basic icon.
3. Under VBAProject (Workbook filename) / Microsoft Excel Objects, double click on ThisWorkbook.
4. In the window that opens in the VBA workspace, type:

Private Sub Workbook_Open()
Application.Cursor = xlNorthwestArrow
End Sub

This will set the cursor to the familiar “Select” arrow every time you open this workbook. Save the spreadsheet.

Now, to open Excel I use a shortcut to the CursorFix spreadsheet, then I immediately close it but leave Excel open. Then I open whatever spreadsheet I need to use and the arrow persists.

My question is, does anyone have a solution for the big white cross? Nothing I found on the internet worked for me. Thanks.

 

 

 

 

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This is a discussion of your issue but without a solution: https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/msoffice/forum/all/excel-cursor-stuck-on-white-cross/5ab183d2-5762-49df-bf65-fabb13cc1ca1

Dell XPS17, 11th Gen Intel I7, 64gb RAM, Windows 11 Home 23H2

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Thanks, Paul, I read it, and I do believe it has something to do with the interaction of the mouse and Excel, but I’ve got two mice, albeit both Logi Verticals, and it does it on both of them. I reset the mouse to default, but that didn’t do anything. So onward and upward…

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Wired or wireless?

Susan Bradley Patch Lady/Prudent patcher

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Mouse is wireless, bluetooth connection. Thanks for asking.

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And you’ve changed the batteries?

Susan Bradley Patch Lady/Prudent patcher

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You might try doing a repair of Excel…

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/repair-an-office-application-7821d4b6-7c1d-4205-aa0e-a6b40c5bb88b#ID0EBF=Windows_11

 

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Susan, Logi Vertical Mice are difficult to change the battery – but I have two of them, one bought this year, once about 2 years old, and I use them on a PC and a laptop – neither one has exhibited any power issues, they work for months between re-charges. Both of them have the same issue with the white cursor in Excel.

OldNavyGuy, I did the repair of my MS office suite, white cross is still there!

I will buy a wired mouse, always good to have a backup anyway, and see what happens with that.

 

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Just as a follow-up, I got the wired mouse. Booted the computer without either of the Logi mouses, opened an Excel spreadsheet and there was the white cross. So I went to device manager and deleted all the mouse entries except for the wired mouse – including deleting the Logitech  HID-Compliant Unifying Mouse. Rebooted with the wired mouse, opened an excel spreadsheet and again, the white cross. Went to device manager, and all the entries I deleted were back.

So I deleted them all again, but this time uninstalled the Logitech Options Plus software, which had been updated when I received the new Logitech MX Vertical mouse, about 10 days before all of this started. Rebooted, and it was all the same, white cross and all the device manager entries back.

SOooooo, that’s where it is. I hope if anyone else has this problem the macro above helps, and maybe one day there will be an update of Excel or Logi and all of a sudden all will be well. If not, well, opening a spreadsheet with a macro, closing it and then going to work is not the worse thing in the world. Thanks Paul, Susan and Old Navy Man (I’m an old Marine Corps Man, older than you I expect!) Do appreciate your interest and help.

 

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You might try this…

https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/msoffice/forum/all/why-does-my-pointer-turn-into-a-cross-in-excel/073f4f07-2613-4d44-ad14-f4ee45dcdc87

Semper Fi

 

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rdleib

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Nope, not in extended mode, can turn that on and off, makes no difference. Thanks for the followup – Semper Fi!

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In my Excel the default cursor shape is a white cross if the cursor is on the worksheet, cross-hairs if it is on the extend selection cell corner, and an arrow if it is on the ribbon, menu, or status bar. If I understand your problem it is not that the cursor shape is wrong but that it is too large. The height on my cursor white cross is less than 1 row but you have reported that your cursor is much larger.

Try these:

1) In the Excel status bar at the lower right, click Display Settings, choose Optimize for compatibility, then restart Excel.

2) There is a similar option in Options/General: When using multiple displays, choose Optimize for compatibility.

3) You can also try to disable hardware acceleration in Options/Advanced if your version of Excel has that option.

These suggestions are from:

https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/msoffice/forum/all/cursor-in-excel-too-large/3d638d12-014e-4c14-bd9f-b8d195f53c9d

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rdleib

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I still don’t know how it got to where it was, but thanks to everyone I have it back to where it was more or less. There were two issues – somehow the cross was very large, and I couldn’t drag and drop cells – I blamed that on the size of the cross.

Two overcome the cross size issue, I had to shrink my Windows cursor down 2 clicks, but with that the cross now fits inside a cell on my spreadsheets, although it now looks a bit puny on my computer screens…  But I still couldn’t drag and drop cells. Reading up I found File/Options/Advanced/Editing Options/Enable fill handle and cell drag and drop was unchecked, so checked that, and I now have the little dot in the lower right corner of a cell when I click on it.

I’m not the most observant person, and I did think the “general select” in a worksheet was a arrow, not a little white cross…which certainly complicated the searching for answers. But I am sure I never unchecked the fill handle option or bumped up the windows cursor size, so some glitch occurred.

Again, thanks to everyone. The macro I posted does turn the general select into an arrow, but the better approach is to find a way to get the cross back into a cell – by shrinking the windows cursor size or increasing the zoom level of the spreadsheet – and checking the fill handle option if the little dot isn’t showing when you click on a cell.

 

 

 

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Could something be amiss in the Accessibility settings? Either in Excel, Office, or Settings App.

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Thanks for asking, PK, I’ve looked at Excel, Word, and Settings accessibility, I can’t see anything except I used the Settings accessibility/mouse settings to reduce the size of the mouse cursor so the white cross would fit in the cells of my spreadsheets!

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As a test, I’d backup the system with a drive image, uninstall Office 2021, and then re-install it.

 

1 user thanked author for this post.

rdleib

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Thanks, OldNavyGuy, appreciate the input. Actually, I backed up the system on the 15th, and after that did delete Office 2021 and re-install. The only issue there was, in my mind, a chance the latest update of Office 2021 caused the problem…and when I reinstalled it, using the original Office 2021 .exe file, the first thing it did was go out and download the latest version. In any event, after the reinstall the big white cursor was still there. I’m convinced it’s back to normal now with the smaller white cross and the fill handle checked, I just have no clue what happened.

Semper Fortis

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Thank you. The VBA approached worked successfully!

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