How to Stop Excel From Moving the Selection Box When You Hit Enter

When you type information into Excel and press the Enter key, the selection box moves to the cell below. This is the standard behavior of Excel, but you might find this frustrating. Fortunately, the default setting can be changed.

A quick and simple solution to stopping the selected cell from being changed is to press the “Ctrl” and “Enter” keys together, instead of only pressing “Enter.” Using the key combination ensures that the cell you typed the information into remains the active cell.

This is a nice quick solution for one-off instances, but you can also edit the Excel options to permanently stop Excel from moving the selection box.

Start by clicking the “File” tab on the Ribbon.

Next, select “Options” at the bottom of the list on the left.

From there, click the “Advanced” button and then uncheck the “After Pressing Enter, Move Selection” box to disable all movement of the selected cell.

Alternatively, you could change the direction of the selected cell by using the “Direction” list.

These changes will affect all workbooks ensuring that Excel behaves how you need it to.