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I am developing a VBA add-in for Excel that uses the RefEdit control.
One of my testers pointed out that he couldn't use keyboard shortcuts while selecting cells. And I found the solution to this problem here: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/291110
Set the magical value QFE_Richmond to 1 in the Excel section of HKEY_CURRENT_USER. This solution works great.

My question is why?
What is the significance of the "QFE_Richmond" variable? Where did it come from? Why do you need this obscure flag to fix a simple glitch that has persisted at least through Excel 2010 and at least as far back as 2003? Does this flag do anything else?
And is it safe to automatically make this change for the users of my add-in, even though it globally affects their Excel settings?

Josh
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The obvious answer seems to be that they either forgot to apply it in each version or they don't consider it important enough to make default because it is on the border of being considered a bug or a usability preference because it has an easy workaround(i.e. using the GUI instead of shortcuts). I wouldn't think applying the hotfix would hurt anything - they wouldn't make it available if that were the case.

Changing QFE_Richmond registry key to 1 is a to enable a hotfix.

http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=291110

"Typically, hotfixes are made to address a specific customer situation and may not be distributed outside the customer organization."

In addition, the RefEdit control seems to have alternatives: http://peltiertech.com/WordPress/refedit-control-alternative/ Which have been recommended because it has compatability issues: http://peltiertech.com/WordPress/unspecified-painfully-frustrating-error/ So you could probably presume that MS has some gaps in their quality control for the RefEdit feature.

Good Luck.

EDIT/ADDITION:

By the way,

QFE stands for Quick Fix Engineering

Stepan1010
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  • I've seen that "alternative" link before, but it still doesn't seem to have the keyboard controls, which is what my users want. – Josh Sep 19 '12 at 23:18
  • Yea, I guess that was just to show that MS seems to have some gaps in their quality control on the RefEdit feature. – Stepan1010 Sep 19 '12 at 23:54
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    I work for Microsoft on Office - Stepan is right, you are enabling a hotfix with this key. When we turn these sorts of things off by default, it is usually because we are either worried about or know about regressions that the hotfix causes in other areas of Excel, or with other products/addins/customer setups. – Chris Rae Nov 30 '12 at 01:28