Excel - Focus highlight does not highlight the selected cell #19641

Steps to reproduce

• Enable Focus highlight
• Open an Excel sheet
• Move around the focused cell with arrows in the sheet
• Press NVDA+tab to report the focus
• Press NVDA+pavnum5 to report the current nav object

Actual behavior

The whole grid of the sheet is highlighted w

Expected behavior

The current cell should be highlighted with focus highligher and nav object highlighter.

Important notes

• It may be the same cause of why the new magnifier does not follow the focused cell in Excel (cc @Boumtchack). Thus this issue will probably become more impacting in NVDA 2026.2.
• When using UIA in Excel (experimental), the focused cell is correctly highlighted.
• When using Narrator, Narrator's focus highlight rectangle correctly highlights the focused cell too.

NVDA logs, crash dumps and other attachments

None

System configuration

NVDA installed/portable/running from source

Installed

NVDA version

2026.1beta3

Windows version

Windows 11 23H2 (AMD64) build 22631.6491

Name and version of other software in use when reproducing the issue

Microsoft® Excel® LTSC MSO (16.0.14334.20468) 64 bits; it is LTSC 2021.

But the same issue was/is also present on Office 2016 on another computer.

Other information about your system

N/A

Other questions

Does the issue still occur after restarting your computer?

Yes

Have you tried any other versions of NVDA? If so, please report their behaviors

Not re-tested but already present on older NVDA versions, at least 2025.3.x.

If NVDA add-ons are disabled, is your problem still occurring?

Yes

Does the issue still occur after you run the COM Registration Fixing Tool in NVDA's tools menu?

Yes