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Microsoft Excel hangs ("Not Responding") when pasting multiple cells (for example a column), especially with Excel 2010

Troubleshooting


Problem

User launches Excel. User opens a spreadsheet (for example XLSX file). User selects several cells (for example a vertical column of 10 cells). User right-clicks on a different cell, and tries to click "paste". The Excel session seems to hang (pause). If the user tries to click anything they will see the cursor as an 'hourglass', the sheet turns white, and the words 'Not Responding' will appear at the top.

Symptom

Imagine a scenario where the user selects several cells in a column (for example 19), and then right-clicks and chooses "copy" (see below):


User then right clicks on a different cell and then tries to use the "paste special" or "paste" functionality, such as clicking on some of the icons shown below:


When moving the mouse over some of those options (e.g. the square pictures inside the 'Paste' options) at some point the entire Excel session will appear to hang.

During the above symptoms, the user may notice that the Excel sheet always has the following words shown at the bottom-left corner:

    Select destination and press ENTER or choose Paste

In addition, if the user launches Task Manager, they can see that EXCEL.EXE is using 100% of one CPU core.

This hanging may last several minutes.

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Document Information

Modified date:
08 May 2025

UID

swg21659193

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