I desire for a standard Excel function to have a temporary color band appear
in the current row and column. For example a check box in Tools/Options/View
section to turn it on/off.


You can find a solution that uses VBA macros he
Office Online Assistance Excel 2003 Working with Data Formatting
Data Borders and Shading Use color banding to locate the active cell
(http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/as...366231033.aspx)

But it has more drawbacks and it's unconfortable.

My Excel version: Excel 2003 SP1