Excel won’t take focus (2003)

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I just received a call from a coworker who said she is having intermittent problems with Excel not taking focus when she has more than one application open and she tries switching to Excel. In talking with her, I’ve narrowed it down a bit. She has a large monitor and has both PeopleSoft and Excel open at the same time. She often will enter data into PeopleSoft and then click in the Excel workbook to enter data. Lately, when she clicks in Excel, it stays greyed out and won’t let her do anything until she closes Excel in the Task Manager and re-opens it. It seems to be any Excel file. Not a problem with Word or her email program. But it does seem to only happen when Excel is open with PeopleSoft. Since PS works fine with other programs open, and they work fine with it, I am thinking it’s something with Excel.

Do you have any thoughts on what may cause this?

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I don’t know what causes this, nor can I find mention of it elsewhere. Does it work better if she uses Alt+Tab or the Taskbar to switch from PeopleSoft to Excel?

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Hi Melanie
Is it possible that there is an incomplete data entry task in People soft when this problem occurs?

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Sorry for the late reply. This user is in a different office and our schedules don’t coincide that often. After more research, I have asked her more questions and am waiting for her reply. It sounds to me like Excel DOES take focus when she clicks a cell, but then it loses focus almost immediately. I asked her if it happens just the first time she opens the workbook and tries to use it for the first time (so is it maybe opening a dialog window behind the worksheet or behind PS). She said it only happens with this one workbook – originally she said all Excel files. So I asked her to call me so I can remote her PC and see exactly what is happening. I appreciate your thoughts and I will get back to you with either what I find out for an answer or with additional puzzle pieces. Thank you!!

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Sounds like the age-old problem of: “This is exactly what happens. every time without fail (almost always — I think).”

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