Excel 2016 (Office 365) user interface (GUI) freezes but I can still save and close workbooks

I frequently have a problem with Excel 2016 (Office 365). Without apparent cause, most of the GUI freezes. I.e.:

• I can't select cells anymore;
• the menu ribbon is frozen;
• sometimes main elements of the ribbon go green and the spreadsheet appears empty where there should be content;
• BUT the Save, close (x) and resize buttons at the very top still work.

Saving all files and closing all Excel windows and restarting Excel solves the problem.

I work with Excel a lot and the problem occurs approximately once a day.

Any input is welcome. I don't even know what to search for to see if others have the same problem. I also don't know if it is a problem with one of the workbooks that I'm working on, if it is an Excel problem or even a Win 10 problem (I also have the issues with the graphics driver crashing all the time that so many other Win 10 users have). I installed Office 2016 after doing a clean install of Win 10.

I'm running this on a Surface Pro 3 (256GB, i5). UPDATE (April 28, 2016): Just got a new Surface Pro 4 (256GB, i7) and started from a clean slate - still the same problem...

UPDATE (April 2016)

I found another work-around:

Hi, thank you for that suggestion! I have been using Excel without hardware graphics acceleration for a few weeks now and the problem is mostly solved. I have not had the complete GUI freeze anymore (see suggestion further down in this forum). So this is a good work-around.

The only thing I notice now, is that the interface around the box that shows the formula in a selected cell is often not showing up properly. For example, the "insert function" button or the buttons next to it do not show up properly.

UPDATE (Feb 1, 2016)

I found a work around:

I am 100% certain by now that this is a problem relating to the display driver. Something gets set wrong in the display driver (sorry if my language is technically not 100% correct, I'm not a software engineer). So I figured if I get the display driver to reload or at least update some basic parameters of my display, Excel should be displayed normally again.

My first attempt was to disable the display driver. Windows complained a bit but, sure enough, it did the trick. My next step was to change the display resolution (just to revert the changes right away). Worked again.

The simplest trick for me is to turn off my external display and turn it on again.

It's not ideal but not the worst solution either. And hopefully at some point Microsoft will fix the issue.

UPDATE (Jan 11, 2016):

I have an UPDATE to my first post:

Another major issue I have been dealing with since I upgraded to Win10 and Office 2016 is that my display / graphics card driver has been crashing frequently (I'm using a Surface Pro 3).

A couple of days ago Excel acted up on me again and I was about to close out everything and restart Excel. Just then, I got a notification that display driver has crashed and has recovered AND right when the notification came up, Excel's GUI returned to normal. Everything worked again. It is hard for me to pin down the causation but I'm certain now that the two are related. I have Excel open 99% of the time. So it's hard for me to tell if Excel is causing trouble with the graphics card driver or the other way around. In fact, I can't say for sure whether Excel is the only (Office) program that has this problem. It just happens to be the one I work with A LOT.

I also think I can rule out a specific spreadsheet as being the cause of the problem. I have had the problem with a couple of spreadsheets now.

Seems like the Microsoft moderators quickly ran out of ideas. Does anyone else have some ideas what the problem/solution might be?