“Arrow Keys Not Working in Excel” – Solved

If you want to move your active excel cell from one cell to another, you probably have three different ways. You may directly click on the cell using your mouse, or you may navigate using the keyboard arrow keys, and many more. However, the best and the most comfortable way is to use the keyboard arrow keys. Do you agree with this? I am sure, your answer is – YES 😎 However, sometimes while you are using the arrow keys it does not move from one cell to another cell. Instead of taking you to one cell right or left, the entire worksheet area moves. In this blog, we would unlock the answer to this question – ‘Why the arrow keys are not working in my excel?

The reason for this is that you have mistakenly turned on or enable the Scroll Lock in Excel. So the solution is now quite simple. You need to disable or turn off the scroll lock in excel, and your problem is solved.

Purpose of Scroll Lock in Excel

The scroll lock in excel is a feature that determines how the keyboard arrow keys should work in Excel.

  1. If you disable the scroll lock, this means that using the keyboard arrow keys shifts one cell up, down, left, or right.
  2. However, if you enable the scroll lock, this means that the use of keyboard arrow keys shifts one row up/down or one column left/right.

How to Check if Scroll Lock is Enabled or Disabled in Excel?

To determine if the excel scroll lock is on or off, simply check the status bar of your excel workbook. The status bar is a thin bar just below your worksheet area.

Status Bar in Excel

If the status bar shows the text ‘Scroll Lock’, it means that scroll lock is ON. See the image below.

Scroll Lock ON on excel status bar

Make sure that the display of Scroll Lock is enabled on the status bar. Right-click on the status bar, and check whether there is a tick beside ‘Scroll Lock’, as shown below:

Enable Scroll Lock Display on Status Bar

The status bar in excel only shows or displays whether the scroll lock is on or off. However, it does not actually control the excel scroll locking functionality.

Arrow Keys Not Working in Excel - Solved

2 Ways to Resolve Scroll Lock Issue in Excel

There are two ways to remove scroll lock in excel, as listed below:

  • Using Keyboard Scroll Lock Key
  • Using the Scroll Lock button on the On-Screen Keyboard (virtual keyboard)

Turn Off Scroll Lock Using Keyboard Key

If you are using a Windows operating system, search for the key with the label as – ‘ScrLk‘ or ‘Scroll Lock‘ on the system keyboard. Simply press it once, and that’s it.

You have successfully disabled the scroll lock in excel.

Scroll Lock Keyboard Key

For Mac OS users, the F12 key on your keyboard is the ‘Scroll Lock’ key.

Using On Screen Keyboard To Turn Off Scroll Lock

If you do not have a scroll lock key on your system keyboard, then you can still use the ‘On-Screen Keyboard’ application to lock and unlock the scroll lock in Excel.

Simply follow the below steps:

  • Click on the ‘Start’ button and then type ‘On-Screen Keyboard’ to search for the virtual windows keyboard application.
On Screen Keyboard Navigation
  • In the On-Screen virtual keyboard application, click on the button labeled ‘ScrLk‘ to disable it. The blue-colored button means it is enabled, and the blank denotes that it is disabled.
ScrLk on On Screen Virtual Keyboard Application

With this we have reached to the end of this blog on “Why the arrow keys are not working in Excel?”.

Readers of this blog also check ExcelUnlocked post on ‘Excel Keyboard Shortcuts‘ 🙂

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