I am seeing this on my own workstation, but I'm being asked about it by more and more clients lately - Excel 2010 seems to have odd focus issues. For example:
a) When opening an Excel spreadsheet from Windows Explorer, Excel opens, appears to have focus and does correctly open on top of other open windows, displays the file and I can edit cells, but I cannot click anything in the Ribbon bar or menus. In order to gain access to menu items I first have to lose focus (by clicking to another open application, the Task Bar or Desktop - anything that takes focus away from Excel) and then click back into Excel, whereupon the menu items now work correctly.
b) If Excel is already open and I open another Excel file from Windows Explorer, the new window isn't brought forward - it remains behind the previously open spreadsheet. In addition, Excel isn't given focus at all in this situation - it is retained by Windows Explorer (which may or may not be open on the same screen as Excel, although it's more obvious if they overlap as Excel clearly remains behind the Explorer window). Additionally, if all existing spreadsheets are closed but Excel remains open and I open a spreadsheet from Explorer, the same behaviour occurs (ie Excel fails to gain focus and it is retained by Explorer).
My personal workstation is running Windows 7 Pro x64 SP1 (this behaviour was evident before SP1's release) and Excel 2010 version 14.0.4760.1000 (32-bit). I have seen it occuring on other PCs using both 32- and 64-bit versions of Windows 7 Pro and Excel 2010 (all 32-bit). While the workaround is relatively simple, it's still frustrating (and more than a little confusing for many non-technical people - one of my clients has been frustrated by this for weeks before I discovered she was experiencing the issue). I find it a little strange that I have been unable to find references to this problem anywhere (and I've been looking on-and-off for several months now). Maybe I'm just looking for the wrong things... Any help that can be provided will be greatly appreciated. Trevor Hardy
