If you’ve ever received an error that claims Cannot shift objects off sheet, you should keep reading. The problem occurs when your worksheet contains several objects, such as comments, charts or AutoShapes. When you try to hide or insert columns that might “push” these objects off your spreadsheet, Excel gives you an error.

Many Excel users solve this problem by simply deleting comments from the spreadsheet. But what if you need those comments?

Instead, you can simply “move” your comments out of the way by following these three steps:

1. Make all of your worksheet’s comments visible by selecting View | Comments from the menu bar. (In Excel 2007, select the Review tab and click Show All Comments in the Comments group.)
2. Move your comment boxes as far up and to the left of their corresponding cells as you possibly can move them.
3. Hide all of the comments again by selecting View | Comments from the menu bar. (In Excel 2007, click the Show All Comments button again.)

Now you’ve essentially moved all of the comment objects out of the way so you can work in the spreadsheet without “pushing” them out of the worksheet. And the physical location doesn’t affect the comments’ placement when you hover your cursor over the cell. The comment still displays directly beside the cell, even though you’d moved the comment box up and to the left.

Filed under: Microsoft Office Tutor