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Excel 2007: A Guide to Mouse Pointer Shapes and Their Uses

If you’re new to Excel, here’s a guide to the different mouse shapes you’ll see, and what they are used for.

General Select

Description: Thick plus shape.

How to get one: Appears when the mouse is anywhere over the worksheet grid.

Used for: Selecting a range of cells by clicking and dragging the mouse over the cells. You select by clicking on one corner of the range, holding the mouse button while dragging to the other corner. You can select more than one range by holding the Ctrl before dragging the second selection.

Fill/Copy

Description: A thin plus shape.

How to get one: You have to hover the mouse pointer over the small square in the lower right corner of the cell pointer to get it.

Used for: Copying formulas or for creating a series of numbers, months, days, dates or times or a custom-made series. Start by clicking on the cell holding the formula to copy (or type the month or day into that cell), move the mouse over the small square in the corner and when it changes to the thin plus shape, click and drag down or to the right. To run a series (1, 2, 3 or 1%, 1.5%, 2% or 101, 102, 102) show Excel the series you want by typing in the first two numbers in the series. Then, use the General shape to select those two cells. Finally, move the mouse over the corner to get the Fill Handle shape, then click and drag.

Move Cell (or range of cells)

Description: Mouse arrow with a compass shape incorporated.

How to get one: Hover the mouse over the black edge of a cell or selected cell range to make it appear.

Used for: Moving contents of a cell or range of cells. Click and drag to move cell contents. A pop-up message will warn you if you are dragging cells to an area where the cells already have content.

Column/Row Resize

Description: For column resize, black line with arrows pointing left and right (see image). For rows, black line with arrows pointing up and down.

How to get one: Hover the mouse pointer over the line on the column or row headings that separates A from B, 1 from 2, etc. Position it over the line on the right-hand of the column to resize, or the lower-line of the row to resize. In Excel, you drag to the right to make a column wider or down to make a row taller.

Used for: Making columns or rows wider or narrower. Double-click to resize to widest entry or click and drag resize. Multiple columns or rows can be resized at the same time by selecting them first, then double-clicking or click and drag.

Column/Row Select

Description: Small black arrow pointing down or to the right.

How to get one: Only appears when the mouse is over a column or row heading.

Used for: Selecting a column or row. Single click to select the column or row. Click and drag across the headings to select multiple rows or columns. Hold Ctrl while clicking to select noncontiguous columns or rows (columns B, E, H, rather than A, B, C).

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