Loss of selection highlight when Office application loses focus

Topic

New Reply

In Word 2010 and Excel 2010, the current selection is highlighted only while the window has focus. When focus is shifted to a different window, the highlighting disappears and it becomes impossible to identify the selection. I assume that this is so in all Office applications and all versions.

This is a significant problem for me, because I often have to compare a list of file names in an Excel workbook to a corresponding list in another application. Since the other application is not Excel, the comparison has to be done by eye. I do this by displaying the two applications side by side and looking back and forth. If I can’t see the current selection in both applications at once, this comparison becomes somewhat more difficult and much more error prone.

Is there a way to work around this habit of Excel? (I’d call it a bug, but I’m pretty sure Microsoft wouldn’t agree.)

Reply | Quote

Replies

I see the same thing with Office 2010 on Win7. If I set two programs side by side or stacked, highlight text in Word then click in the other program, such as Firefox, the selected text in Word becomes un-highlighted but when I click back into Word the selection is there. It may only be with Microsoft programs as I can open a document in WordPerfect, select some text then move between it and this Reply and the selection remains.

Before you wonder "Am I doing things right," ask "Am I doing the right things?"

Reply | Quote

I’ve seen the same thing happen in some different programs. But there are some I can think of where this doesn’t happen.

No idea why but I doubt it’s a bug, per se.

Reply | Quote

I’m pretty sure it’s determined by a property of some object associated with the display of text. Probably intentional, but from my perspective, incomprehensible.

The question is how to get around it. One approach would be to take a snapshot of the window with highlights displayed; but that’s self-defeating, because I have to reconcile the differences between two lists, and I can’t change the Excel list through the snapshot.

Reply | Quote

I wonder if this is a situation that could work on a computer having 2 monitors attached, open one instance of a program in one monitor and open a second instance of the program in the other monitor?

Before you wonder "Am I doing things right," ask "Am I doing the right things?"

Reply | Quote

Berton, I’m not sure what you’re getting at. If the other program has the focus, Excel doesn’t — it doesn’t matter whether Excel has one window open or two.

In any case I don’t think two monitors would make a difference. Windows doesn’t display windows on one monitor or the other; it displays them on a desktop, and maps the desktop to the monitors at a lower level. Ask yourself what would happen to a window that spans the boundary between the two monitors — it seems unlikely that one part of the window would be handled differently than the other.

Reply | Quote

Access 2010 does not show this behavior – just tested by selecting a row in a query, then moving focus to another program. The selected row is still highlighted. If you are making changes to the other (non-Excel) file, maybe you could import the data or create a link inside Access to your Excel file?

Hope this helps

Reply | Quote

Does this happen no matter what other program you switch to? What about something like Control Panel or Notepad?

Reply | Quote

It does. I would have been astonished if it didn’t. It happens as well if you click the Desktop or the Start button. It happens when an Office application loses focus; it’s not a result of some other application’s hocus-pocus.

BTW, I acknowledge Sib’s report that it doesn’t happen to Access 2010, but I can add that it does happen to Outlook 2010.

BTW2, Sib, you unfortunately misinterpreted the nature of the problem. This is not a situation where the other program has anything to export. Its “list” is a simply a display of the files that are included in a project. I can imagine the blank look I’d get if I could contact the designer of that program and ask him how to export the list. (In case you’re wondering, the program is ePublisher, a high-end application for electronic publishing.)

Reply | Quote

This is a huge productivity killer; I have silently complained about this for years. Windows Secrets writers, are you reading this thread? How can we collectively complain to Microsoft about this?

Reply | Quote

This is a huge productivity killer; I have silently complained about this for years. Windows Secrets writers, are you reading this thread? How can we collectively complain to Microsoft about this?

Have you tried different Operation Systems such as Mac OS X or any of the more than 200 versions of Linux to see if the same problem can be replicated? Would help to eliminate if Windows or any Windows-based program is at fault.

Before you wonder "Am I doing things right," ask "Am I doing the right things?"

Reply | Quote

This has nothing to do with the applications, but with how the OS handles application windows – the same happens even between different windows of the same app (e.g. if you use Word in split-screen view). Although selection highlighting is lost, there are plenty of workarounds, such as changing the font colour or highlighting of the selection before changing focus.

How can we collectively complain to Microsoft about this?

You could use Microsoft’s feedback pages…

Cheers,
Paul Edstein
[Fmr MS MVP - Word]

Reply | Quote

BTW, I acknowledge Sib’s report that it doesn’t happen to Access 2010, but I can add that it does happen to Outlook 2010.

Upgrading is not an answer–exactly the same in 2013 Word, Excel, Access [doesn’t have problem], Outlook.

This has nothing to do with the applications, but with how the OS handles application windows

Surely it must be the applications, how else would Excel have the problem, but Access not? Or do you mean some other OS will cause different behavior? I’m using Win7 Pro SP1 x64.

This is a huge productivity killer

Indeed it is. Doesn’t affect me much, but when it does I leave another offering on the crowded MS Stupidity altar.

Lugh.
~
Alienware Aurora R6; Win10 Home x64 1803; Office 365 x32
i7-7700; GeForce GTX 1060; 16GB DDR4 2400; 1TB SSD, 256GB SSD, 4TB HD

Reply | Quote

Berton, something isn’t getting through, and I don’t know how to convey it. Again, this is something an application does when it loses focus. It’s not something the application gaining focus does to it. Not something the operating system does. Not something the Russian national hockey team does. The application does it to itself.

When most Office applications lose focus, selected text changes from white-on-blue to black-on-white (provided the text was black-on-white before it was selected). In Internet Explorer selected text behaves the same way, for obvious reasons. In Firefox it changes from white-on-blue to white-on-light-grey; likewise in Thunderbird, which shares much of Firefox’s digital DNA. In Chrome it changes from white-on-turquoise to black-on-medium-grey. In Adobe Reader selected text is black-on-medium-blue, and when the application loses focus it doesn’t change at all. And so on.

Will Office behave differently on a Mac? It will if the Mac doesn’t let applications control the appearance of selected text when focus is lost. I don’t have a Mac to experiment with, but I’d say that in any highly refined modern GUI, that’s unlikely.

In any case this may be an interesting and even useful experiment for other people, but it’s academic for me, because my employer isn’t going to let me use a Mac. And if it did let me I couldn’t use one anyway, because ePublisher doesn’t run on a Mac.

Reply | Quote

macropod, I originally came here asking about workarounds, so I’m very interested in what you have to say. Removing an old highlight and adding a new one each time I change the selection would not work very well for me. (It would be more work for less payback than simply printing the lists and comparing on paper, the ultimate workaround.) I’m interested in the other workarounds you mentioned.

Reply | Quote

I’m interested in the other workarounds you mentioned.

The only workarounds I can think ATM would be various on the theme of changing the font colour or highlighting. As for changing highlighting, etc., since you’re already selecting the content, highlighting it need only be a shortcut key away, and reverting only requires an Undo.

Cheers,
Paul Edstein
[Fmr MS MVP - Word]

Reply | Quote

This sounds wacky but it’s worth a try: pick a different color scheme (Window color(s), in Personalize) and play with that a bit.

I tried your problem directly from the thread in Outlook, selected some text, and then brought up first Games, and found that the highlighted text turned to a grey, not white (=invisible) background, then I opened Word, brought up some text, and the originally-selected text retained the grey background when I performed operations on a document in Word.

I should explain that my color schemes are based on Windows Basic, which avoids the complications that might arise from aero or transparency effects, and which actually gives or appears to give the maximum amount of personal control over individual components of the desktop.

Reply | Quote

Not wacky at all; that’s exactly the type of out-of-the-window thinking I am looking for!

Unfortunately it looks like things will not be as easy on my system (Windows 7 Professional) as on yours. I don’t have any cutely named themes like Games; only Basic, Classic, and High Contrast #1, #2, Black, and White. None of them makes an inactive selection visible. (Not all of them make text visible. In three of the four High Contrast themes it’s either invisible (white on white) or illegible (light yellow or green on white)!)

The dialog for varying individual properties of a selected theme lets me vary Selected Items, Inactive Title Bar, and Inactive Window Border. But there’s no Inactive Selected Items option.

As a final quirk, something I did with the dialog crashed Firefox, so I had to enter this whole message again. :o:

I’m going to have to study this some more and see if I can figure out how to get what you got.

Reply | Quote

I had a longer answer for you, but I am setting up a clean install of Windows 7 Home Premium and was looking over what you may be getting, and if you right-click on the desktop to get to Personalize, then left-click on the words ‘Window Color’, you will find a box named ‘Transparency’ which is ticked ‘on’ by default.

I don’t even remember seeing it before, but I suggest you take a quick peek to see if that might be the culprit.

Reply | Quote

The dialog for varying individual properties of a selected theme lets me vary Selected Items, Inactive Title Bar, and Inactive Window Border. But there’s no Inactive Selected Items option.

That’s the dialog I was referring to.

Reply | Quote

I think you have two problems.

We are chatting about is the image doing the disappearing act, for which I hope to post again.

The more significant problem is that you are comparing things ‘by eye’ while using a computer, which is a scandalous waste of resources. ‘Doing the grunt work’ is what computers are good for, and I suggest you post posthaste in the Spreadsheets forum, detailing what you are up to and see if the Spreadsheet gurus can suggest a solution.

Just over a year ago support for Lotus 1-2-3 ended, and I was reading through the online discussions about that. It is available for free download for those who are interested, and they have an Office Suite (Symphony) that is now open source but that seems unavailable. Anyway, lots of users were stuck with the problem of performing conversions from Lotus to Excel, so there is no shortage of expertise in that area.

Reply | Quote

Dogberry, I think I’ve failed to explain clearly what I’m working with.

One of the lists I have to compare is ePublisher’s list of the document files referenced in the project file. This list is just a display in one of the panes of the ePublisher window. It’s not exportable. Thus a spreadsheet application can’t help, because there’s no way to get the list into one except to type it in by hand.

Which, as a way of avoiding the need to compare it by eye, is pretty much self-defeating.

Reply | Quote

Dogberry, I think I’ve failed to explain clearly what I’m working with.

One of the lists I have to compare is ePublisher’s list of the document files referenced in the project file. This list is just a display in one of the panes of the ePublisher window. It’s not exportable. Thus a spreadsheet application can’t help, because there’s no way to get the list into one except to type it in by hand.

Which, as a way of avoiding the need to compare it by eye, is pretty much self-defeating.

If this is WebWorks ePublisher and you have the program, as I believe you stated, then it is fully compatible with Word, and Word, for the purpose at hand, is compatible with Excel. I presume you can import a column from Excel into a Word document, and a column from ePublisher into the same Word document, and place them side-by-side, or else take the column from Word and import it into ePublisher.

As for the comparison itself, I think the destination program should be able to compare the content of the cells automatically (such as by highlighting differences), but I’m a bit rusty in that department.

If you are not familiar with this source, you might find useful information at Technical Communication Center, and consider subscribing to the blog by Ugur Akinci.

Edited to add:

I may not be as rusty as I thought.
Word has a built-in feature that allows you to compare two entire documents and that will then show you the exact differences between them. Google something like ‘Word compare documents’, and it will provide a large number of tutorials and explanations of how to use the feature.

Create a Word document of the cells taken from Excel, and another Word document with the cells taken from ePublisher, and run ‘compare documents’. It may be necessary to have them formatted identically – I’m not sure myself if what is compared is content only.

Presto, all of the differences between the documents will be displayed, and it will have been the software that did the work, not you, bobbing you head back and forth between screens, or your eyes between displays, or going crazy trying to deal with selection highlights.

It’s appears that ePublisher has a similar feature, but I’m not familiar with the program and it’s hard to tell without it.

Reply | Quote

I’ve used Lotus 1-2-3 and Lotus AmiPro [later as WordPro] since the early ’90s. I have IBM Lotus Symphony on a couple of computers, have saved the downloads so I can do it again.

Before you wonder "Am I doing things right," ask "Am I doing the right things?"

Reply | Quote

dogberry, I was very puzzled by your post until I realized that you were telling me how to compare a list in a ePublisher document to a list in a Word document. Again, I need to compare the list of files in an ePublisher project to a list in a Word document.

Perhaps an analogy will make this clearer. Imagine a Word document that contains a list of files that are supposed to be in a directory, and an instance of Windows Explorer that displays a list of the files that are actually in the directory. How do you compare the two? You don’t export the list from Windows Explorer for use in Word or Excel; that capability simply doesn’t exist.

My problem is exactly the same, except that the list is in ePublisher’s Document Manager pane instead of a Windows Explorer window.

If I had this problem with Windows Explorer, I would open a command line window and redirect a DIR command to a file. For ePublisher there’s no equivalent workaround.

Reply | Quote

I need to compare the list of files in an ePublisher project to a list in a Word document.
…
For ePublisher there’s no equivalent workaround.

If you have a scanner, you could OCR a screenshot. Or perhaps there’s software which will OCR an image file directly [without need for a scanner], I don’t know–would be great for long screens, provided you use a screen cap tool which takes a full window, not just the visible part.

ETA
I just did a Bing search for ‘ocr an image file’, and it looks like there are plenty of options, eg Free OCR[/url].

My fav screen cap tool is Greenshot[/url]

Lugh.
~
Alienware Aurora R6; Win10 Home x64 1803; Office 365 x32
i7-7700; GeForce GTX 1060; 16GB DDR4 2400; 1TB SSD, 256GB SSD, 4TB HD

Reply | Quote

Lugh, I appreciate your effort to help, but we’re getting into Rube Goldberg mode here. Capturing the list in images (one scroll at a time), cropping them, OCRing them, and reassembling them in a text file would require more work than comparing the lists by eye.

I’m willing to accept that there’s no effective workaround for this problem, and move on.

There actually is a way I could capture the file list from a file — if I were willing to reverse engineer ePublisher’s project file format and write a program to extract the file list from it. I’d be attracted to that idea if I thought I was going to face this problem forever. But within a year we’re going to automate large parts of our production process, and the problem I’m trying to solve will probably go away. That limits the amount it would make sense to invest in a solution.

Reply | Quote