I'm having a really frustrating issue with Excel that seems to be affecting several users in my organization. We're noticing that Excel often freezes up when switching between it and other applications or while copying data between different workbooks. The freezing can last anywhere from 10 to 30 seconds, and sometimes it crashes completely. Even when it recovers, clicks don't register correctly—like highlighting entire ranges instead of individual cells. I'm wondering if this could be related to DPI scaling issues since some users have different scaling settings on external monitors.
Here's some context about our setup: we're using Microsoft 365 Apps for Enterprise, mostly on version 16.0.19530.20226, with some on an older version (16.0.19426.20260). The issue appears on various machines—different brands and specs—so performance doesn't seem to be an issue. The files are accessed from different locations like OneDrive and SharePoint, and the problem occurs with both small and large spreadsheets.
We've already tried disabling hardware graphics acceleration, Live Preview, and background error checking, as well as switching Excel to power-saving mode in the GPU settings, but nothing seems to work. Other applications don't seem to have these freezing or input issues. Has anyone else experienced this with recent updates to Excel or found any solutions? I'm really at my wit's end here!
3 Answers
Just asking, do you redirect the users’ appdata folder? That could potentially mess with how Excel operates depending on where it’s trying to save or access settings.
Have you tried testing with new Excel files? Sometimes the issue can be related to specific files or network drives that may not be connected. I’ve noticed that Excel can get cranky when it tries to find network locations that aren’t there. Also, don’t forget to disable any Excel add-ins or try running Excel in safe mode to see if that makes a difference. Oh, and temporarily disabling your antivirus could help, too!
I've encountered this problem with older versions of Excel as well. It sounds ridiculous, but you might want to try pressing both Ctrl keys, then Alt keys, and then Shift keys, five times each. This sometimes clears strange selection issues. For the freezing, I know you said you tried disabling hardware acceleration, but that usually helps too if you can find it effectively!
Haha, I guess it's worth a shot! I can't find the hardware acceleration option in settings though, but I did some registry tweaks to try and enable it.
I did test with new files, but we're still having issues. All add-ins are disabled, and I haven't changed any AV settings lately. Going to try disconnecting those network drives.