Excel 2016 - Cannot type anything into a cell all of a sudden

Anonymous
2017-04-14T07:08:05+00:00

Hi,

I am experiencing a problem with Excel 2016 that is really frustrating.

I am working normally in excel 2016, when all of a sudden I cannot type anything into a cell. If I press Ecs nothing happens. I do not have macros, nor protected sheet or cells. I am working with multiple (2 or more) open excel files at the same time. I tried to figure out, if I press some combination of keys that would cause this, but found nothing. I, however, can move the mouse over the sheet and click different cells. I think the arrow keys work as well.

The strange thing that always "solves" the problem is pressing Enter. Pressing the Enter opens another Excel file that is already opened, and after simply going back to the first one, I then can work on normally. This can occur once, twice but sometimes even 10-times in a single day! Just terrible.

This is time demanding, many times I write into a cell and then see that the cell is still blank, I press the enter to make it work again, going back... - I cannot work like this.

When I was working with the same files in Excel 2013 and 2010 I hadn't have experienced such problems. 

I already read some other forums with people experiencing the same problem, but haven't found any solution yet.

Do you have any?

Thank you!

P.

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Microsoft 365 and Office | Excel | For home | Windows

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  1. Anonymous
    2020-09-16T22:48:14+00:00

    Amazingly despite the huge number of complaints over a long time, Microsoft has not fixed this. Something seriously wrong with their customer service / support.

    If you scroll the thread you'll see things that worked for some folks.

    Bill

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  2. Anonymous
    2020-09-01T19:43:57+00:00

    i've read about 14 pages of those replies and i seem to have somewaht the same problem.

    Im one of the IT guys at an Insurance company and some Calling Agents use the same excel (on 365) to generate bill reports.

    Everytime we create a new page on this excel, all the cells work but 1, and by messing around that cell we can type on it, but never on the 1st time. 

    This problem is very serious because they have payments to proceed and also this seems to happen at each agent 1 by 1 for a few days then it stops then its back again... 

    File was created in 2006 and has since been modified alot with formulas and Macros. We've already recovered the file from an older version to see if it would work... it did but not for long. This is Excel 32 bit.

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  3. Anonymous
    2020-08-09T13:10:59+00:00

    This is what has worked to resolve the errors on my machine (from Microsoft support):

    Please try to disable the Excel graphics hardware acceleration.

    1. Click on File, then Options
    2. Select Advanced on the list on the left hand side.
    3. Scroll to Display options
    4. Tick Disable Excel Graphics Hardware Acceleration;
    5. Click OK to save the changes.

    If it does not resolve your issue, you may refer to the link below.

    https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/office/trouble...

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  4. Anonymous
    2018-02-28T09:50:03+00:00

    One of our users is having the exact same issue. In our case the user is working on a VMware horizon client and working in Excel 2013.

    After some troubleshooting I have not been able to reliably replicate the issue.

    It only happens with this one user.

    We're considering a reset of the users' VDI profile, but we'd rather not use a cannon to kill a mosquito.

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  5. Anonymous
    2017-11-21T08:06:42+00:00

    Hi P,

    Please let us know your updates at your convenience if you need further help on this issue.

    Thanks,

    Cliff

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