Comment 1 by bdorer on 2015-05-20 21:34
This is a dupplicate of #5088 and so of #4630
Changes:
Added labels: duplicate
State: closed

Comment 2 by jteh on 2015-05-20 22:39
No, it's not a duplicate. This is about the initially selected item in the Elements List dialog being the item nearest to the cursor instead of always the first item. #4630 is about a list of sheets.
Changes:
Removed labels: duplicate
State: reopened

@jcsteh Should we restrict the scope of this ticket only to list items in the Elements List dialog, or may we kindly broaden it to encompass Elements List dialogs on the web, Word, etc. also wherein the last selected element instance (and hopefully element type as well?) is remembered and moved to automatically? If the former, this ticket may require the Microsoft Office Support label.

Remembering the last item would be undesirable because the user then wouldn't be able to move to elements near the cursor. For example, if you move your cursor to the middle of a document and open the Elements List, it makes sense to show the items near the middle of the document, not some item somewhere else.

We already move to the element nearest the cursor on the web, in Microsoft Word, etc. It looks like we do this for Excel charts too. However, the problem is that this is based on the top left cell of the chart, but I don't think we move the cursor to that cell when we move to a chart. Doing so should fix this issue, since the user would always be positioned on the same chart if they remained positioned on the starting cell. For example:

1. Let's say you are positioned at cell A1.
2. You want to move to the second chart which begins at cell E30.
3. You open the Elements List. The first chart will be focused. You select the second chart.
4. You examine the chart, make some notes in a document and come back to the spreadsheet.
5. You will be positioned at cell E30 in the spreadsheet.
6. If you open the Elements List again, you will be positioned on the second chart, since you are located at cell E30.

@sumandogra, would this solve the issue for you?

@jcsteh yes I guess this would solve this issue. Actually it makes sense to display the object in the elements list which is next to the current cursor position like in Web browsers. I can confirm that it improves efficiency somehow especially in very complex excel sheets.