There is a quiet absurdity at the heart of this user's frustration, and it deserves a direct acknowledgment: a tool meant to give you control over your data should not make you fight for the cursor. Years of intermittent, maddening behavior occur where clicking inside the conditional formatting formula box sometimes works, sometimes does nothing, and where arrow keys occasionally insert cell references instead of moving the caret. This is not a user error, and it is not a niche complaint. It is a persistent crack in the foundation of a feature that millions rely on daily, and it has gone unaddressed for years.
What makes this particularly telling is the humility in the Excel user's question. The user wonders aloud if they are "being an idiot," even after testing this across multiple versions of Excel and multiple machines. That self-doubt is the real cost here. When a power user starts blaming themselves for a tool's inconsistency, the tool has already failed them. The fact that this happens whether you edit in the small input box or the expanded one only deepens the mystery. There is no clear pattern, no workaround, no logical explanation. It is simply a dice roll every time you need to wrap a rule in an AND() function.
Here is what this means for you, the person who has felt that same flicker of rage when the cursor refuses to land where you clicked: you are not the problem, and you are not alone. The issue is real, reproducible, and frustratingly undocumented. But there is a practical takeaway. When you hit this wall, do not keep clicking. Instead, use the F2 key to enter edit mode, or press Escape to exit and re-enter the dialog entirely. Sometimes the act of leaving the field and coming back resets the focus state. It is not a fix, but it is a survival tactic. And for the broader community, this is a reminder that even the most mature software carries vestigial quirks that no one bothers to explain.
The deeper point is this: a tool's value is not measured by its feature list but by how little friction it adds to your thinking. When a simple edit becomes a battle of wills, the tool stops being an enabler and starts being an obstacle. That is not a minor annoyance. That is a call to demand better. Not louder marketing, not a new theme, but a genuine commitment to the small, unglamorous interactions that make a tool feel trustworthy. Until then, keep your F2 key close, and know that the fault is not in you. It is in the box.