Microsoft Excel is being slow when copy and pasting

This is EXACTLY my issue except I've never had the clipboard issue. Quick repair also failed for me. I use Excel 365 at work and never have these issues. It is a different account and a business license instead of a personal one. I'm not sure if that matters. I have very similar specs as you except I'm 2.8GHz and you are 3.8. I've been having these issues since I installed Excel on this laptop when I bought it. My husband tried the same spreadsheet on his laptop and had the same issues. I've seen other recommendations to disable certain graphics within Excel. I don't even have the option in my version.

I just want to add that it happens in all my spreadsheets, I just use the one with the most calculations the most often and if it works well in that one it should in all others.

Also, this was happening before I upgraded to Windows 11.

MrsGixxer,

Thanks for your reply,

It is interesting that that specific spreadsheet still had issues for your husband on his laptop. Have you tried repairing the specific spreadsheet? If it got corrupted that could cause the issue on multiple PCs.

To do that go to Open>Browse and browse to the file location. Select the spreadsheet and click the dropdown arrow on Open and select 'Open and Repair...'

For me the clipboard issue is integral to the problem of Excel becoming buggy and unresponsive, but maybe the fix I was given may work for you. Sadly for me it fixed it for about a day and then it came back.

This is what Second Tier Microsoft support told me to try and this fixed it for about 24 hours:

Quit Excel

Go perform the quick repair

Open System Configuration and click on the 'Services' tab

Check the box to hide all Microsoft services

Next click the button to "Disable All" (the Microsoft services are hidden so they wont be disabled)

Restart the PC and check to see if the issue is still there. If its gone great! You can then start re-enabling the services and see which one causes the conflict.

Unfortunately this only worked for about a day and the issue came back, but maybe it will have more success for you & others. It seems like some services or other installed programs are interfering with Excel specifically and Microsoft can't/won't figure it out. Given that the bug came back it probably isn't one of the 3rd party services that was causing the issue in the first place. It didn't arise from any specific update or OS install that I can pinpoint.

The only thing that works for me is quitting and restarting excel every time I copy/paste. This is unacceptable, so I am probably going to quit paying for Office 365 and go back to an older version of office I already own (2013 or so). The new features and updates are useless when the application wont even run well.

Thanks for the reply! I too thought maybe this needed to be repaired but never knew how so thanks for that. I did the steps you laid out (thanks again) but it didn't make a difference. It's very frustrating as you know. Updates that should be quick take much longer especially if I wait to do several updates at once. I'm not sure why my Office 365 works different on my work laptop. My laptop has more updated specs including memory.

Update: I saw when I was doing the repair that I had another option to Extract Data. I decided to try that. I had it keep the formulas. Once it was complete I had most of my data. I lost some of the formatting. Initially I thought it was mostly just column width. As I checked all of my tabs for completeness I saw that a table on one of the tabs was removed including a few hyperlinks within that table and some hyperlinks on another tab. I'm guessing there was something within those formats that was corrupt that the repair couldn't fix. My issue with copying and pasting is gone. Now I just need to figure out how I want to reformat those things I lost. All in all, a small price to pay if this is actually fixed long term.

This is EXACTLY my issue except I've never had the clipboard issue. Quick repair also failed for me. I use Excel 365 at work and never have these issues. It is a different account and a business license instead of a personal one. I'm not sure if that matters. I have very similar specs as you except I'm 2.8GHz and you are 3.8. I've been having these issues since I installed Excel on this laptop when I bought it. My husband tried the same spreadsheet on his laptop and had the same issues. I've seen other recommendations to disable certain graphics within Excel. I don't even have the option in my version.

I just want to add that it happens in all my spreadsheets, I just use the one with the most calculations the most often and if it works well in that one it should in all others.

Also, this was happening before I upgraded to Windows 11.

Shakiru Soenu,

Thanks for your reply. I tried your suggestions and this is what happened:

I opened Excel in safe mode. When I started a brand new sheet, the copy paste issue was not present. When I opened an existing file it would start lagging the moment I tried to copy/paste a value.

I tried opening xcel files as another user and still had the problem of it becoming slow and lagging once I tried copy/paste.

Lastly I uninstalled the most recent update (it was installed Dec 7th) and restarted the PC. The issue continues.

It is worth noting that all my Excel sheets work fine and are quite fast up until I try to cut/copy/paste anything. Earlier in the day I got an error message saying "excel clipboard in use by another application" and I think this is when the issue started as I don't remember them being slow before this. However, since this happened, the PC has had the clipboard cleared multiple times, it has been restarted, and has been logged in as other users (with no additional programs running). I suppose I can try the full repair but I did do a fresh install after the quick repair failed.

Thanks for your help.

Hi AbolishedGolf23!

Thank you for writing to the Microsoft Answer Community Forum. I am Shakiru, an independent advisor and a user like you, and I am glad to be helping you out today.

Oh sorry, you are experiencing this kind of issue.

may I confirm if you have tried the following?

1. Open the Excel in Safe Mode to test if the issue is the same?
2. Have you tried uninstalling the last Windows update?
3. Have you tried to open the Microsoft Excel app from another user account?

Please do this:

1. Try to open the Microsoft App in Safe Mode: Press and Hold down the Ctrl key while opening Word and click OK/Yes to start Microsoft Word in safe mode Then check if the issue is the same
2. Try to login into the PC from another profile account and check if the issue is the same, if it is solved then the earlier profile account is having the issue
3. Troubleshoot Windows Updates lick Start -> Settings -> System. Click Troubleshoot in the right window. Then you can click Other troubleshooters to open the troubleshooter tools in Windows>Select Windows Updates and click run Restart the PC
4. Perform full online Microsoft Office Repair Repair Microsoft Office online again Please check here:https://support.microsoft.com/office/7821d4b6-7c1d-4205-aa0e-a6b40c5bb88
5. If the issue persists, Uninstall the Windows Updates.

Kindly let me know, if you require additional assistance, I will be glad to help further.

Kind Regards, Shakiru