I have updated Windows and all Office apps to the latest version but that hasn't fixed the problem. I've also run the Office 365 The symptom is very strange. When I hit Ctrl-C or use the drop-down menus on a cell in Excel the dashed lines that surround a cell selected for copying show up very briefly but immediately disappear. Using Ctrl-X to cut exhibits similar behavior. If I repeatedly hit Ctrl-C it will occasionally work the dashed lines remain and I can paste but it typically takes 15-20 tries before it will work and if I try again it will fail. This only seems to affect me when I try to copy cells. If I select a cell and then edit the cell and manually select the content of the cell I can copy and paste with no issue. It also appears to only be an issue when a cell is not empty. If I select a cell that has been highlighted but has no content that also works properly. It's only when there's text or a formula in the cell that this is an issue. This only affects Excel, I haven't observed the issue in any other app. Try starting Excel in safe mode press the control key immediately after starting Excel, it should pop up a confirmation dialog to ask whether you want to start in safe mode. If that makes your problem go away, the cause is very likely either an add-in or your personal macro workbook. See: with some pointers as to how to trouble-shoot add-ins. Jon, At least clear what happens with dashed border - if clipboard doesn't work it dissappears. But i didn't find concrete solution, sorry. Correct, I don't think that's the case. I'm not getting an error that the clipboard is locked and the clipboard still functions correctly. Sorry for the delayed response, for some reason I didn't get a notification about another post so I just saw microsoft excel cannot insert new cells because it would push non-empty cells off when I came back and checked manually. It's definitely not a keyboard issue. I have the same problem at home and at work and regardless of whether I'm using a docking station with external keyboard or built-in laptop keyboard. Excel is basically worthless if you can't copy and paste cells. Select just one cell in the paste area or an area that's the same size, and try pasting again. I just needed to scroll over horizontally select the cell in column A, and press Enter or Ctrl-V to paste. I am also in the same boat. Excel in Windows 10 slows down very frequently, even when only 1 workbook with no complex formulas is open. Hi Jon, I have the exact same problem on both my surface pro 4 and on my freshly formatted desktop pc. In Excel 2016, I cannot copy any cells. The dashed lines will show briefly and then disappears. A copied cell usually have the dashed lines circling it all the time. When I try to paste, a left bracket shows up. Hi Jan, none of the methods work. In an effort to solve that problem, I changed some settings under options. Well, then my large workbook quit behaving nice. I would copy a row to one or more rows and all I got was the results from the copy reappearing in the new rows. Well, that was cured with switching the calculations from manual to automatic. Fixed the copy paste problem. I faintly remember using the manual calculation on a large worksheet from 20 years ago. I've been trying to dump tons of formatting color, borders, etc. I saw that in one of my searches on google. It seems to help, except in the process, the message comes up again and sometimes doesn't clear for hours, even overnight. It's hard to dump formatting if you can't access the file and save your changes. I have been dealing with recovered files, multiple saves and so on. I may have to start over with these files and recreate them. They are great grade calculators, with a sheet for each area homework, attendance, quizzes, etc. The fancy formatting with colors, borders, boxes helped to avoid errors with data entry. I teach large classes 100+ and this has evolved with each graduate assistant, computer, software change over the past 15 years. Probably quite a patchwork job by now. I might be on the road to sanity if all of this works. I hope the manual to automatic switch in calculations works for you. The only way I could copy cells was text only via the clipboard. I use a nifty little bit of code to insert the contents of a cell into the footer of the page. I did my copying and once the page was working I removed the comment ticks and everything worked. Hi all, I had this same issue and was disappointed to get to the bottom of the page with no answer. This is really frustrating, but I think all we need to do is be a bit more organized and not leave workbooks open that we're not working on. That's my new protocol anyway. Not really a workaround, but does highlight what is going on!. This just started for me today. When I copy the formula into another cell from another spreadsheet, the formula shows, but the result in the result from the cell I copied it from. I can't do this for hundreds of rows. How did I break Excel and what can I do to fix it. I have the same issue, have not managed to find the root cause as yet but do have a simple workaround that gets microsoft excel cannot insert new cells because it would push non-empty cells off working again. Open notepad or an email or probably anything else with some text in itpress Ctrl A, Ctrl C, then Ctrl V. You can't copy paste values for example. You can see that from your Start Task Manager. In excel 2010 any workbook opened from explorer was opened from the last application opened. In 365 they try but from my experience sometimes fails to open all of them in only one application. As a novice user I think I have the same problem. I am trying to copy a range of cells in a column to the adjacent column ie next month. I used to be able to do this with one mouse operation - select the cell range then move over to the next column and it would copy that range. It changes the content of each selected cell to the first top cell. This is definitely something that has changed or a parameter that I've changed but I don't know what. No, it's one seamless mouse operation. I position the mouse on the bottom right corner of the top cell to be selected then move the mouse down to select the required cells, At the bottom cell I move the mouse over to the adjacent column and it should copy the old contents into the new column. Now it copies the contents of the top cell into all the lower cells and doesn't attempt to copy them into the adjacent column. The cursor displays a bold cross and doesn't change shape when selecting cells or trying to move the cells. It used to display a different cursor during this copy operation. Hi, That's essentially what I have been doing. It seems to work now so either you fixed Excel over breakfast or it was my finger trouble. Let's close this for now and I'll see if it continues to work. I had this same problem last month where it didn't work as you illustrated but then it did work later. Hope it's not an intermittent problem - they are the worst kind to fix. Many thanks, Ian Add me to the list. Specifically I was trying to copy formulas from a range of cells to paste into another range. Some cells had formulas, others only had values. When attempting to 'paste formulas', Excel would only perform a basic 'paste' of all the data in the copy-from range, thus overwriting the values in the target range. I tested with different files on three separate machines. One desktop and one tablet both running Office 365 desktop versions of Excel 2016, and one other desktop running Excel 2010. Their are two common denominators: All three systems are running windows 10 two running Pro, one running Homeand all the files tested were last modified using Excel 2016. I've tried all the solutions posted here so far - no joy. Surely hope this get a solution quickly. I was having the same issue as the original post, although after reading the thread I realized I had also lost the ability to drag down from two cells containing 1 and 2 respectively and have Excel complete a series: instead, all the cells in the range now had 1. I could even copy in the failing workbook and paste correctly in another one. It was only in the failing workbook that if I selected a cell or a range of cellscopied them, and as soon as I clicked on a new cell the dashed lines would disapear and there was nothing left to paste. Same as the original post, I was able to copy and paste the text content from one cell to another. I am an occasional Excel user: the only thing that was different between the failing workbook and the rest of them is that it contained macros. I don't fully understand the code, I copied it from a googled example and adapted it to my particular needs. The macros I copied count the number of coloured cells in a range. While writing this reply I tried duplicating the file and removing the macro module on the copy. Calculate End Sub So I did comment back the ActiveSheet. Maybe for folks who are having the issue in any workbook, the problem could be triggered by having a start macro with some command such as the line I showed. The dragging issue must be another problem because it seemed to microsoft excel cannot insert new cells because it would push non-empty cells off in all my workbooks, not only in the failing one. However after closing Excel and reopening just the failing workbook, dragging 1,2 to get a series was once again working, both in the failing workbook and in another fresh one I opened. I could not get it to fail again. I hope this helps somebody at Microsoft look into both issues. I hope they can fix this but in the mean time this was my work around: 1. Make Clipboard visible under Home tab 2. Select the cell where you want the info to be pasted on 4. Note: it will be pasted without formats. Again if someone else can figure out this issue that would be great, but in the mean time these steps have worked every time. Thanks I had this very same problem. Right clicking also didnt work as the drop down only appeared for less than a second and disappeared again. So I opened the clipboard and saw that i had 24 items of the same one in the clipboard. Tried to Clear All but to no avail. I clicked on an empty cell. And on the keyboard, i pressed Escape. And i almost bought a new computer. I've had similar issues in the desktop version of Microsoft Office Professional Plus 2010. I first noticed that Excel would not drag-and-drop from cell to cell. I couldn't paste in, any capacity, within a workbook either. Which lead me to discover the problem existed across all the Office programs I had open. I've just come across this issue in Excel on a colleague's computer, running Windows10. What we found as a workaround was that selecting the required range, holding Ctrl and dragging the entire frame from workbook A to workbook B successfully copied the range. It helped that we were working on a dual screen. As soon as we clicked on workbook B, the dotted lines from workbook A disappeared and the paste function reverted to pasting some text that had been copied elsewhere earlier in the day. Looks like this issue is going on since last October, with no resolution offered from Microsoft. I have the same problem. Today, I find that even drag-and-drop copying is not working as expected. To be sure, the drag and drop works, but the selection and the cursor become non-responsive for several seconds. The only way I can get them to respond seems to be either click on another Excel file, or click on the Preview in the taskbar to get back to the same file. The repair of Office programs did not work at all, and so far on my computer, this weird issue is restricted to Excel 2016 only Version 1805; Build 9330. This did it for me, Im glad it was simple. Right clicking also didnt work as the drop down only appeared for less than a second and disappeared again. So I opened the clipboard and saw that i had 24 items of the same one in the clipboard. Tried to Clear All but to no avail. I clicked on an empty cell. And on the keyboard, i pressed Escape. And i almost bought a new computer. I had the copy and paste problem starting just recently. I open a blank excel file, type something in a cell, copy and then try to paste the cell elsewhere on the same sheet. After a few seconds excel is gone, closed down. I tried many of the solutions offered but nothing works. I even uninstalled office and reinstalled it. I was skeptical whether this would work but after opening a blank TextPad file, typing something in it, then selecting it and pasting it twice back in the same file, the excel file was able to copy and paste. Does this show the problem has something to do with the clipboard. Now when I try to duplicate it, it doesn't work any more.
