Merged cells: move / select with cursor keys

Hi,

I am using AdvStringGrid with nodes and merged cells on some rows to display text scan results. For this grid I have selectRows active, for other similar ones I have it turned off.

When using the mouse on any of the grids to select ranges and copy them to the clipboard, it works okay. Using the keyboard however has issues. I found a TMS demo which shows similar issues, demo in AdvStringGrids: asg46 folder. Problems I see seem to be purely related to merged cells, not to nodes.

First odd behaviour is with simply moving around the grid with cursor keys: as soon as you hit the "fixed row with merged cells" in row 8 from above it, you cannot move further down when the active cell coming from is a merged cell. Moving e.g. from the (not merged) cell left of the image works, from the image does not. I added a merged cell right below that fixed row to test the other direction, moving from bottom up works in contrast.

Next odd thing: again move around, but this time with Shift key pressed all the time to select a range. As soon as you have a merged cell as active cell, the current selection range is gone. With mouse it is possible to select the range though.

One strange look&feel when using the mouse: activate a cell right and below the image, drag the mouse to the top left cell to select everything. For merged cells spanning multiple columns, only the first of these columns is shown using the selection color. As soon as you activate another window / application, the display is updated and the complete range is drawn using the selection color.

These behaviours are very confusing and frustrating for users preferring keyboard over mouse control, not intuitive. I would expect the selected range to be expanded by the additional columns and rows covered by the merged cell.

Do you have suggestions how to change this, am I missing an option or flag? Looking forward to a fix for this, thanks in advance!

Cheers, Matthias

Posted under VCL General by accident, should be moved to Grids.

The issue is caused because fixed cells cannot be selected.
We'll investigate if we can improve this behavior nevertheless.