Locking the Zoom Factor

Dave is using Excel on a computer that uses a touchpad, and it's far too easy to change the zoom percentage inadvertently when scrolling through a worksheet. He wonders if there is a way to "lock" the zoom factor applied to a worksheet.

This problem is related directly to the use of a touchpad in a mouse-centric program. Excel has no idea what type of input devices you have attached to your system, so it treats your touchpad as if it is a mouse. It's not, however (duh!), so you need to remove some of the confusion by following these steps:

1. Display the Excel Options dialog box. (In Excel 2007 click the Office button and then click Excel Options. In Excel 2010 and later versions, display the File tab of the ribbon and then click Options.)
2. Click the Advanced option at the left of the dialog box. (See Figure 1.)



Figure 1. The Advanced option of the Excel Options dialog box.

3. In the Editing area, make sure the Zoom On Roll with IntelliMouse check box is not selected.
4. Click on OK.

In all likelihood, this will solve your problem. If you still want to use the trackpad to adjust the zoom factor, you can do so by holding down the Ctrl key as you drag down the trackpad.

If this doesn't solve the problem, then it may be that you are inadvertently moving the pointer over the Zoom slider at the right side of the status bar. While you could turn off the status bar (using a macro), a better solution might be to simply remove the Zoom slider from the status bar. You can do this by right-clicking on an empty space of the status bar, which displays a Context menu. At the bottom of the Context menu, click on the Zoom Slider option. This should remove the check mark from that option and, in the process, remove the Zoom slider from the status bar.

If you continue to have problems with your touchpad, you might want to disable it temporarily in Windows. This site has information on how to do this in Windows 10:

https://www.tenforums.com/tutorials/141924-enable-disable-touchpad-windows-10-a.html

There are options outlined on the page that allow you to easily turn the touchpad on and off at any time, even as you are using Excel.

ExcelTips is your source for cost-effective Microsoft Excel training. This tip (13777) applies to Microsoft Excel 2007, 2010, 2013, 2016, 2019, and 2021.