Conflict between enableExcelCopyBuffer and Cell Click Event – Suggest Click Event Should Take Priority

[hwlv]

Hi,

I’ve encountered a conflict between the enableExcelCopyBuffer option and cell click events in Slickgrid-Universal.

When enableExcelCopyBuffer is enabled, a standard click (mouse down and up) will correctly trigger the cell click event. However, if I click and hold the mouse down without immediately releasing it, the cell click event is not triggered at all.

In my opinion, the click event on a cell should always take priority and be triggered regardless of whether enableExcelCopyBuffer is on or off. The current behavior makes it feel like there’s a conflict between copy buffer handling and basic click interaction.

You might consider looking into how Excel or Handsontable handles this—both ensure that the click interaction works seamlessly even when copy/paste features are enabled.

This issue affects usability, and I believe it would improve the user experience if the click event were consistently triggered.

Thanks!

[ghiscoding]

if I click and hold the mouse down without immediately releasing it, the cell click event is not triggered at all.

Well unless I'm mistaking, that is technically impossible to do!?! Unless your supports multi-touch? But even then, if you hold the mouse down then of course the cell click won't trigger, why would you think that would work?? Or do you mean that the cell click even is only being triggered after releasing the mouse, if so then are you looking for a mousedown instead of mouseup to trigger early, is that what you meant? But the thing is that when you click mousedown, then you start the cell selection process which is quite normal...

@zewa666 is that something that rings any bells? I don't really understand what the issue is here and I'm not really sure that I want to look into it either. I know that you made a patch recently to fix the issue with the external Angular drag zone, but I don't think that has anything to do with this, does it?

It might be easier to see an animated gif of the issue, because I really don't understand what the issue is.

....or wait, are you talking about event not bubbling outside the grid?

[hwlv]

Hi again,

Thanks for the reply! Let me clarify what I meant.

What I’m seeing is this: when I click on a cell and don’t immediately release the mouse button (i.e., I hold it down for a moment), the cell becomes visually selected (highlighted), but the onCellClick event is not triggered.

This creates confusion, because visually it looks like the cell has been selected, yet I can’t capture that event in my code. I was expecting that any visual indication of selection (like highlighting) would correspond to a cellClick event being triggered — but that’s not happening in this case.

So my two main points are:
1. I think this behavior is inconsistent and might be worth revisiting for better UX consistency.
2. Alternatively, if there’s a reliable way to capture the currently highlighted cell (even without a click event), that would also solve my problem.

Thanks again for the great library, and I appreciate your thoughts on this!

[zewa666]

hi there, mouse Events have a specific order and click definitely comes after mouseup. otherwise this would mess up completely the whole drag experience. So libs not following that approach are actually doing quite bad UX in my opinion.

https://javascript.info/mouse-events-basics#mouse-event-types

so I would argue the current behavior is working as intended in the sense of common browser behavior and html ux

[hwlv]

Hi again,

Thanks for your time and support!

I wanted to give a quick update — I switched to using the onSelectedRowsChanged event instead, and from there I’m able to get the active cell via getActiveCell(). This approach works for my use case and resolves the issue I was having.

Really appreciate your help and this great library — thanks again for all your hard work!

Best regards,

[hwlv]

Thanks again for the help!

I’ve found a solution that works for my use case, so I’ll go ahead and close this discussion for now.
Appreciate your time and support!