Outlook Excel preview, can't use keyboard arrows, copy or select in the Excel preview.

Anonymous
2022-12-09T08:13:07+00:00

When I get an Excel file on mail in Outlook and preview it, I can't use keyboard arrows, copy (Ctrl +c/v) or select(Ctrl +a) in the Excel preview ( was able 2 days ago).

Till then, I try to restart my computer, change my keyboard, clean my Outlook cache, look for any options for that but I can't find any.

Compared all options with the colleague sitting next to me (because on him it works normally)

It works normally for example in Word file preview.

I can use mouse and right-click/copy and select it with it, but can't use my keyboard in excel previews...

Tried turning off antivirus, macros, add-ons, update outlook...

Are there any simple options that I didn't find for that, or do I need to reinstall Outlook?

Outlook | Windows | Classic Outlook for Windows | For education

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  1. Anonymous
    2022-12-13T15:42:53+00:00

    Having the same issue, it was working yesterday but then in the afternoon it all of a sudden stopped. I like many others use ctrl + c in the excel preview many times a day

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  2. Anonymous
    2022-12-13T13:17:01+00:00

    Same problem - I also did a full uninstall/reinstall and it did not help. The arrow-select Excel preview from an Outlook email message does still work in the Office 365 Outlook web version, but it's broken in the desktop app version of Outlook.

    UPDATE1: this is broken when previewing .xls, .xlsx, .xlsm, and .xlsb files. But it's not broken for selecting text in a preview of word docs, text docs, and .csv files. It's only the Excel files that seem to be affected.

    UPDATE2: clicking once with the mouse inside the previewed Excel file, then manually pushing the scroll bar all the way to the right/bottom of the previewed screen, holding down the SHIFT key and clicking a 2nd time will select everything. This is faster than manually scrolling row by row (or column by column) for giant files, although it's still a horrible alternative.

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  3. Anonymous
    2022-12-12T14:20:39+00:00

    I woke up today with this exact same problem. It looks like an update was done to Outlook over the weekend as now I see a couple things have moved and I have a calendar showing 2 months instead of 1 (little things), but this is a giant pain! As now I cannot use arrow keys or ctrl+c on any cell in an excel preview file. exactly as OP says. I spend most of my work day opening emails with excel attacments and highlighting and selecting data to paste elsewhere. I'm following this to hopefully find some sort of solution to not completely destroy my workload.

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  4. Anonymous
    2022-12-12T08:47:50+00:00

    Hi,

    Tried all the things you mentioned, but nothing worked.

    This is the version that I have:

    Image

    Think I will go full uninstall/install and try if that will work.

    Edit:

    After full uninstall / Install. still nothing (I stay on the last version )

    Are we sure there are no options for turning off / on the possibility to

    use keyboard arrows, copy (Ctrl +c/v) or select(Ctrl +a) in the Excel preview?

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  5. Anonymous
    2022-12-09T12:42:16+00:00

    Dear LovroTiJM,,

    Good day!

    Thank you for posting to Microsoft Community. We are glad to assist!

    Based on your description, I understand that you have an issue where you can't use keyboard arrows, copy or select in the Excel preview in your Outlook. In order to narrow down the issue for better support, please let me know of the following. Thanks a lot.

    Please try to login OWA (outlook web app) within your account and then check whether you can perform these actions. This will help to narrow down if this is an issue to do with the app itself or hardware.

    If everything is fine in OWA, then please try the following:

    1. Please to scan your Outlook by following these guidelines provided in Scan by using Microsoft Support and Recovery Assistant - Outlook | Microsoft Docs.
    2. Please try to repair your Outlook using steps in Repair an Office application

    You can as well try to Create an Outlook profile and check the result, to prevent you from losing your data, please Back up your email.

    If the issue persists, please share with me the outlook version that you are using as well. What version of Outlook do I have? (microsoft.com) Please share a screenshot like below.

    Please understand that these verifications will help expedite the troubleshooting of your situation. Your patience and cooperation are much appreciated.

    Looking forward to your response.

    Best Regards,

    Ashraf | Microsoft Community Moderator

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