How to fix an issue where a black bar is covering my sheet tabs in Excel

Connor Otterbeck 135

Capture

In Excel within Citrix, a black bar appears at the bottom of the window, obscuring the sheet tabs. This issue occurs across multiple workbooks and machines, making it difficult, but not impossible, to navigate between sheets.

I have attached a screen capture from one of our users that shows the issue.

I am not exactly sure on the steps to reproduce as it seems to happen at random when switching between applications within Citrix.

This is happening since last week but is not affecting all the users at once across our business.

To attempt to fix this issue we have:

Disabled hardware graphics acceleration.
Verified no third-party add-ins are installed.
Adjusted display scaling and resolution.

Any help would be appreciated.

Edit:

Please Read:

As stated by BclemZ in a comment on T J's answer the current workaround is to switch to the semi-annual channel and downgrade to Version 2506 (Build 18925.20184). This has worked for us and we have not gotten another report of it happening since we downgraded a month ago.

However there is no official fix yet

Anonymous

2025-08-26T19:21:08.9733333+00:00

Hi guys my organization is experiencing the same issue, I was wondering if there has been a fix yet? Thank you.
Connor Otterbeck 135 Reputation points

2025-08-27T08:04:14.9733333+00:00

Hi Abishek, Currently the only workaround is to switch to the semi-annual update channel and to downgrade to office version 2506 Build 18925.20184 that was released on July 22nd which you can see here:

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/officeupdates/current-channel#version-2506-july-22
GP-1827 5 Reputation points

2025-09-15T11:06:50.82+00:00

So relieved i finally found this thread and i am indeed not going mad, Literally wasted hours on this as couldn't find any relevant mention anywhere
Connor Otterbeck 135 Reputation points

2025-09-19T12:51:33.85+00:00

I have updated the initial question with the current workaround provided generously by BclemZ
AdamPenney-7212 0 Reputation points

2025-09-26T09:04:34.5933333+00:00

I have reports from a user that a potential work around I put in place seems to have resolved the issue for them. This is for those using Citrix. I have implemented a Citrix policy "Desktop Composition graphics quality" and set this to High instead of the default of Medium.
Kühlem, Markus 0 Reputation points

2026-06-25T07:06:31.7166667+00:00

This issue is still happening on our systems. We have Windows Server 2019, users connect via RDS, our office version is Apps for Business 16.0.20026.20182 - since the last update, the black bars are back for a number of users. This is highly disruptive to the way we work.

After disabling Add-Ins, the issue is still happening.

Answer accepted by question author

Tina L 12,435 Microsoft External Staff Moderator

(The lasted update: The official workaround has been added as a comment below this answer)

Latest Update as of August 18 – Potential Microsoft 365 Service Incident

Hello @Connor Otterbeck and everyone in this thread
Thank you @Connor Otterbeck for the update in the support ticket.

According to the latest response from our Microsoft technical support, the issue we’re experiencing might be related to a broader Service Incident (SI) within the Microsoft 365 environment. However, this incident has not yet been officially published on the Microsoft 365 Service Health Dashboard.

Based on Connor Otterbeck's screenshot:

User's image

While we wait for further confirmation from our Microsoft technical support, let’s all stay patient and continue monitoring the situation.

I’ll share any new updates as soon as they become available.

Tina L 12,435 Reputation points Microsoft External Staff Moderator

2025-08-20T07:48:05.6033333+00:00

Hello @Connor Otterbeck and everyone in this thread.

If you have any updates or additional information regarding this issue, please feel free to reply directly under this answer.

This will help keep everything organized and ensure that others can easily follow the latest developments.

Thanks in advance for your contributions!
Tina L 12,435 Reputation points Microsoft External Staff Moderator

2025-08-20T08:34:51.99+00:00
Latest Update as of August 20 – Latest Update as of August 20 – Official Workaround Available
Hello everyone in this thread.

Thank you @Connor Otterbeck for providing the latest update from Microsoft Support regarding the issue where a black bar is covering the sheet tabs in Excel when running within Citrix.

According to the escalation team, the recommended workaround is to change the Office update channel to Semi-Annual (Deferred). This solution has reportedly helped resolve the issue in affected environments.

Here’s the action plan they provided:

Close all Office applications.

Open Command Prompt as Administrator.

Run the following commands:

cd C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\ClickToRun

OfficeC2RClient.exe /changesetting Channel=Deferred

OfficeC2RClient.exe /update user

This appears to be the current official workaround, and it aligns with what some users here have already discovered.

Thanks again to everyone who contributed!

If anyone has further updates, please feel free to reply under this comment so we can keep everything organized and visible for others experiencing the same issue.
AlexM 40 Reputation points

2025-08-21T15:17:34.8+00:00

Tina L - Has Microsoft official acknowledged that this issue is being worked on and what release for the current channel this will be fixed in? I don't see anything in the release notes since Build 19029.20156 that indicates this issue has been fixed?

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/officeupdates/current-channel
Tina L 12,435 Reputation points Microsoft External Staff Moderator

2025-08-22T08:53:02.9966667+00:00

Hello AlexM,

Thank you for following up and staying updated on the issue.

As of the latest update on August 18, Microsoft has not officially acknowledged the issue of the black bar covering sheet tabs in Excel when running via Citrix LTSR 2402 as a known incident on the Service Health Dashboard.

This was also confirmed in an email response from the Microsoft technical team to Connor Otterbeck, which clarified that the issue has not yet been officially recognized, and that only temporary workarounds have been provided on a case-by-case basis.

The information you saw in the release notes is accurate; there is no mention of this issue in recent builds such as 19127.20082. This suggests that the problem is still being tracked internally, and no official fix has been released.

Currently, Microsoft’s technical team has supported a few isolated cases, such as Connor Otterbeck’s, by providing temporary workarounds. However, these are not official solutions, and there is no confirmation yet that a fix will be included in an upcoming update.

Microsoft has received user feedback and reports, but there is currently no formal recognition of this as a widespread issue, nor any timeline for resolution. I encourage you to continue submitting feedback and reporting the issue via Excel to help Microsoft prioritize it.

Once again, thank you for your contribution.
AlexM 40 Reputation points

2025-08-22T09:00:38.0633333+00:00

Thanks Tina, however like many others have posted on this thread, our customers don't use Citrix and are using just Microsoft RD session hosts on 2016/2019 and Office 365.

Additionally Rolling back the version of Office 365 resolves the issue, and is the current recommended workaround?

So in don't understand why this is not an accepted as an official issue..
Mathias Hoppe 0 Reputation points

2025-09-24T10:52:02.2033333+00:00

Any updates?

We have changed to semi-annual and the black bars are gone but Copilot is not working with that channel so that is not a workaround that we can use.
I have to try and find the latest monthly enterprise channel that we can use and then disable the updates.
GP-1827 5 Reputation points

2025-09-24T11:09:10.1166667+00:00

Still no official acknowledgement from Microsoft........i suggest asking all the upset users to start reporting feedback to the issue via excel

28 additional answers

Geeshan Subasingha 5 Reputation points

2025-08-13T18:08:04.29+00:00

We are starting to get reports of this as well.
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T J 10 Reputation points

2025-08-13T21:27:55.24+00:00

Same issue here. Two separate sites, two different templates, both showing the Excel black bar. Timeline lines up with Richard and Alex. Infrastructure is nearly identical.

We’re running a Horizon desktop environment on Server 19 os.

Templates on Current Channel are affected. Semi-annual channel templates are fine.

Black bar shows up at the bottom of Excel, hiding sheet tabs. It’s intermittent but consistent enough to cause problems.

Already tried disabling hardware graphics acceleration, adjusting scaling and resolution, uninstalling and reinstalling Excel to the Monthly channel. Same result. It works for a couple of hours, then the issue comes back.

Anyone have a real fix or reliable workaround? Could just go back to semi-annual but copilot...

EXCEL GURUs PLEASE SAVE US. Accounting is yell...
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Dean Lofthouse 10 Reputation points

2025-08-14T01:12:43.51+00:00

Hi All,

We are also seeing this. We have temporary fix but as yet have not investigated further.

Ask the user to close all instances of excel then rename the CatalogCacheMetaData.xml to old or something similar. Restart excel all is OK.

C:\Users%username%\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Excel\CatalogCacheMetaData.xml

Again only a temporary fix.
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Cody Deeg 5 Reputation points

2025-08-14T06:27:03.5233333+00:00

A lot of my clients are also experiencing this issue. When you say temporary fix do you mean that it comes back after some time?

Dean Lofthouse 10 Reputation points

2025-08-14T06:33:08.26+00:00

Correct, when we apply the fix the user seems to be okay for the rest of the day but may again experience the issue on next login.

Connor Otterbeck 135 Reputation points

2025-08-14T10:49:45.1333333+00:00

Has this been consistent when you've replaced the cache on each user or does the time it takes for the issue to reoccur differ between users?

Just asking as I am looking to see if this works for us at all.

Cody Deeg 5 Reputation points

2025-08-14T11:08:48.2933333+00:00

I have tried this and as Dean says, it seems to be when the user logs off or hard restarts their Excel

Connor Otterbeck 135 Reputation points

2025-08-14T11:12:41.4466667+00:00

I see, thank you very much

Is there any explanation for why this temporarily solves the issue?

Joe B 10 Reputation points

2025-08-20T08:57:09.5066667+00:00

Didn't help us on RDS Server 2019, user connect via RDP and Citrix is not used!
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Kühlem, Markus 0 Reputation points

2025-08-14T10:02:16.15+00:00

Our admin team has also encountered this error intermittently. We are however unable to reproduce it reliably, making troubleshooting very frustrating.

-Server 2019 build 17763.7558 as RDS
-Microsoft Office 365 version 2507 build 19029.20156
-We don't use citrix, just straight RDP

Disabling hardware acceleration seems to mitigate the problem to a degree. We are very interested in a permanent solution as we are a tax firm, excel is required to work reliably again.
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How to fix an issue where a black bar is covering my sheet tabs in Excel

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