We could not copy the content to the Clipboard, it is in use by another application. You can still paste your content within this workbook but it will not be available in other applications.

I'm affraid we're alone on this matter, indeed. Nobody is using another app blocking clipboard and the root of this issue is laying in Excel itself. But, as usual, all proposals from Microsoft are a clean installation of the whole system ... so use a sledgehammer to crack nuts.

I do not use the Cloud for anything except the occasional up/dowload from OneDrive.

I'm with you on this. There is no reason for another app to be using the clipboard, so that's not the answer. What I would say though is that excel isn't actually frozen for me, it's just that the active cells that you are in aren't highlighted. So to fix that, if you click in a cell or three and then press esc, the highlighting returns.

While I'm no expert, just another user, I have a thought... If you're on Windows 10/11 and you're using the cloud clipboard feature (Win + V), perhaps Excel is having trouble in trying to copy / paste multiple cells to the shared clipboard (perhaps because the shared clipboard doesn't know how to store/process multiple copied cells). Try disabling the shared / cloud clipboard feature and copy/pasting multiple cells in Excel and see if the problem still occurs. If it doesn't, then it's a compatibility issue between the two software's clipboard function.

I guess either Microsoft don't view it as a major problem or not enough users have reported the problem. Either way it needs fixing.

You must be kidding me. The way in which we must sort this unpleasant issue out is just, being polite, improbable. If you guys know that, in many cases, the copy-paste function in Excel may behave like this, just SORT IT OUT.

Your proposal is like going to the doctor and reporting sickness and the answer you hear is, "don't worry, just go to medical school and in six years, you will have a much more clear your problem ...".

Speechless.