 <p>Found the answer and put it here for reference.</p> <p>My requestFocus() action on the JTable did indeed leave selection on the right row, but without any selection of the (single) column. Even when running as normal (not testing) the JTable column did not initially respond to F2. It was puzzling to me why the cell was not initially surrounded by a heavy black border. The answer was therefore to put this line after the requestFocus line:</p> <pre><code>dates_table.setColumnSelectionInterval( 0, 0 ) </code></pre>