[BUG] Option-click to insert row?

[joaocarlos52]

Whenever I option-click a cell in Mac Excel version 11.2.3, it performs
a "insert row, shift cells down" operation. I thought it was some kind
of incompability with my third-party keyboard and mouse, but I tested
in an iMac with original keyboard and mouse, and it showed the same
behavior.

I didn't find any reference to this, either in the help pages or in the
Web.

Is this a bug that I need to report to Microsoft?

TIA.


João Carlos de Pinho
São Paulo, Brazil

 

[Bob Greenblatt]

Whenever I option-click a cell in Mac Excel version 11.2.3, it performs
a "insert row, shift cells down" operation. I thought it was some kind
of incompability with my third-party keyboard and mouse, but I tested
in an iMac with original keyboard and mouse, and it showed the same
behavior.

I didn't find any reference to this, either in the help pages or in the
Web.

Is this a bug that I need to report to Microsoft?

TIA.


João Carlos de Pinho
São Paulo, Brazil

This is not a bug, but standard behavior. If you would like that key
combination to work differently, look in help for customizing shortcut keys.

 

[joaocarlos52]

This is not a bug, but standard behavior. If you would like that key
combination to work differently, look in help for customizing shortcut keys.

Thanks for the answer, Bob.

Unfortunately, I think you're wrong. Twice.

To begin with, there's no way to customize an action like
"option-click". The "Customize Keyboard" command allows to configure
shortcuts formed by key combinations only. You can't configure mouse
shortcuts.

And, more important, this is not standard behavior. It CAN'T be a
standard behavior. If this is a standard behavior, it's one of the most
stupid UI implementations ever!

First off: in a spreadsheet, an operation like "Insert cell/shift
[down|right]" is extremely dangerous to be activated by such a simple
action as "option-click". An "Insert..." command ALWAYS have to ask the
user what to do with the the other cells (shift down, shift right,
insert entire row, insert entire column). If this is the case and the
application can't decide it for itself, why does Excel offer a handy
shortcut to "Insert cell, shift down", a potentially destructive
operation?

Second: if this is a standard behavior, why is there no mention to it
in the help pages? Why don't we find any mention of this anywhere in
the Web? Why doesn't the Windows version of Excel perform an "Insert
cell/shift down" operation when we Alt-click a cell?

Finally: in Mac OS, option-clicking a window is a standard behavior
that means: bring this window to front while hiding the previous active
window. If you combine this action with the "standard behavior" of
Excel, we end up with lots of inserted cells in a spreadsheet every
time we switch windows between Excel and another application (or even
another Excel window) using the option-click method.

Unfortunately, I learned this lesson the hard way. This stupid
"standard behavior" cost me an entire day of hard work. In a
spreadsheet with 850 rows and 20 columns, I had to do the operations
below in every column, one by one:

* SORT THE COLUMN in alphabetical order
* copy the entire column
* paste the column in BBEdit
* in BBEdit, perform a series of grep operations to clean up the text
* still in BBEdit, do the most time-consuming task of the job:
proofread the entire text
* copy the text from BBEdit, cleaned up and proofread
* and paste it again in Excel

At some point of the job, though, I may have switched from another
window to the spreadsheet option-clicking the Excel window. This action
inserted a blank cell in the spreadsheet, shifting the remaining rows
down.

I didn't notice that.

You can imagine what happened after several "Sort" commands: the rows
and columns got out of sync. And I only noticed this problem the next
day, when I saw that one column had 851 lines instead of 850. Bottom
line: I had to do the entire work again.

And all this chaos was triggered by a mere "option-click" acton...

I hope you now understand why this is a bug and not a standard feature.

I've send a feedback to Microsoft regarding this issue, but I'm not
sure the messages sent via their Feedback form are effectively read by
someone. So I ask you to redirect this message to the proper
department. As an MVP, I guess your messages are taken more seriously
by them.


Regards,

João Carlos de Pinho
São Paulo, Brazil

 

[Bob Greenblatt]

Thanks for the answer, Bob.

Unfortunately, I think you're wrong. Twice.

OK, you got me.

To begin with, there's no way to customize an action like
"option-click". The "Customize Keyboard" command allows to configure
shortcuts formed by key combinations only. You can't configure mouse
shortcuts.

Correct. But you could write a macro to trap the insert command.

And, more important, this is not standard behavior. It CAN'T be a
standard behavior. If this is a standard behavior, it's one of the most
stupid UI implementations ever!

Well, I can't vouch for the stupidity, but as far as I remember (way back
long before Excel 4) it worked this way.

First off: in a spreadsheet, an operation like "Insert cell/shift
[down|right]" is extremely dangerous to be activated by such a simple
action as "option-click". An "Insert..." command ALWAYS have to ask the
user what to do with the the other cells (shift down, shift right,
insert entire row, insert entire column). If this is the case and the
application can't decide it for itself, why does Excel offer a handy
shortcut to "Insert cell, shift down", a potentially destructive
operation?

Well, it CAN decide for itself if you select whole rows or columns. The
default for option click is the last choice you made in the shift dialog
box. If the last one was shift to right, that's what will happen when you
option click.

Second: if this is a standard behavior, why is there no mention to it
in the help pages? Why don't we find any mention of this anywhere in
the Web? Why doesn't the Windows version of Excel perform an "Insert
cell/shift down" operation when we Alt-click a cell?

I give up. Maybe it's an oversight. There's a whole bunch of keyboard
commands and mouse clicks that work differently on windows. This, I guess,
is just another of them. And, yes, it should be documented.

Finally: in Mac OS, option-clicking a window is a standard behavior
that means: bring this window to front while hiding the previous active
window. If you combine this action with the "standard behavior" of
Excel, we end up with lots of inserted cells in a spreadsheet every
time we switch windows between Excel and another application (or even
another Excel window) using the option-click method.

Here, I'll agree that this may be a bug, but I wouldn't swear that it's
Excel's. The option click should not be passed through to Excel in this
instance. If you simply click on a worksheet from another application's
active window the selection does not (and I agree should not) change when
the sheet is activated. But, it obviously does in this case.

Unfortunately, I learned this lesson the hard way. This stupid
"standard behavior" cost me an entire day of hard work. In a
spreadsheet with 850 rows and 20 columns, I had to do the operations
below in every column, one by one:
* SORT THE COLUMN in alphabetical order
* copy the entire column
* paste the column in BBEdit
* in BBEdit, perform a series of grep operations to clean up the text
* still in BBEdit, do the most time-consuming task of the job:
proofread the entire text
* copy the text from BBEdit, cleaned up and proofread
* and paste it again in Excel

At some point of the job, though, I may have switched from another
window to the spreadsheet option-clicking the Excel window. This action
inserted a blank cell in the spreadsheet, shifting the remaining rows
down.

I didn't notice that.

Sorry for your problem. But 1) you SHOULD have noticed, and 2) maybe you
should change your work habits to avoid interface actions which you think
are stupid, and 3)if you had option clicked on a row or column header
instead of a cell things might have been worse. Remember what is stupid to
you is probably the greatest feature ever to someone else. And vice versa.

You can imagine what happened after several "Sort" commands: the rows
and columns got out of sync. And I only noticed this problem the next
day, when I saw that one column had 851 lines instead of 850. Bottom
line: I had to do the entire work again.

And all this chaos was triggered by a mere "option-click" acton...

I hope you now understand why this is a bug and not a standard feature.

Nope. I may agree with you about it's utility and dangerous actions, but
since I think it has always worked this way, I'd call it standard. Perhaps
you should also consider making more frequent backups.

I've send a feedback to Microsoft regarding this issue, but I'm not
sure the messages sent via their Feedback form are effectively read by
someone. So I ask you to redirect this message to the proper
department. As an MVP, I guess your messages are taken more seriously
by them.

Representatives from the MACBU read both this forum and do indeed get the
"Send Feedback" messages. They will hardly ever respond directly to either,
but I assure you the messages are taken seriously, and carefully weighed for
inclusion in future updates and releases.

 

[joaocarlos52]

Sorry for your problem. But 1) you SHOULD have noticed,

I would notice if all the cells had contents, but that was not the
case: this particular spreadsheet already had lots of blank cells.

and 2) maybe you
should change your work habits to avoid interface actions which you think
are stupid,

I certainly would, but until this incident happened, I didn't know that
Mac Excel inserted a cell on option-clicking.

When I noticed the problem (in the next day, when I saw that one column
was one cell bigger than the other columns), I thought that I had
performed one of the "Sort" operations without choosing the "Expand
selection" option.

Hours later, when I was redoing the whole job, I tried to control-click
a cell to invoke a contextual menu, but I pressed the Option key
instead of the Control key. This time, I noticed that Excel inserted a
cell in the spreadsheet.

It was in this exact moment that I realized how the spreadsheet got
messed up the day before.

Perhaps
you should also consider making more frequent backups.

I do perform daily backups of every job I do: to my dotMac account and
to an external disk. The problem is that this incident occurred AFTER
the backup was done. Now I know that daily backups are not enough when
we have to deal with applications that perform destructive actions with
single and undocumented shortcuts.

Representatives from the MACBU read both this forum and do indeed get the
"Send Feedback" messages. They will hardly ever respond directly to either,
but I assure you the messages are taken seriously, and carefully weighed for
inclusion in future updates and releases.

I hope they do.


Regards,

João Carlos de Pinho
São Paulo, Brazil

 

[Gordon Rainsford]

Finally: in Mac OS, option-clicking a window is a standard behavior
that means: bring this window to front while hiding the previous active
window.

How does this differ from just clicking the window? Is this documented
in Mac Help (I can't find it)?

 

[CyberTaz]

Yes, Gordon, the keystroke is documented in OS X Help & has been around for
eons. Depending on how you look it up in Mac Help, however, it is described
in slightly different ways in several dialogs.

In addition to bringing the window you opt+click to the foreground it Hides
the application whose window you are in ('minimizes' or 'sends to the dock'
if you prefer those terms) rather than simply shifting it to the background
the way a plain click would.

Regards |:>)
Bob Jones
[MVP] Office:Mac