Microsoft fixes broken copy and paste for Excel 2016 users

Microsoft has fixed a known issue that causes copy-and-paste failures for some Excel users after installing the September 2026 KB5002914 security update.

This follows a wave of customer reports on the Microsoft Q&A forums and Reddit that KB5002914 breaks copy-and-paste, autofill, and formula dragging in Excel.

"Although users try to paste content, the source remains selected and the destination is unmodified," Microsoft said when it confirmed these issues earlier this week and blamed them on what it described as a code regression. "When this issue occurs, users receive no indication of the failure, such as a beep or error message."

However, while this bug affects Excel Online and Excel 2024, 2021, 2019, and 2016, Microsoft has released a fix that will only resolve these issues for Excel 2016 users.

"We released update KB5002655 to mitigate this issue. We are aware of some user scenarios impacted by conditional formatting and recommend customers follow our guidance," Microsoft told BleepingComputer when asked to confirm if KB5002655 fixes the copy and paste shortcut bug.

"This update fixes the known issue in KB5002914 that causes certain paste operations to fail silently," it says in a support document released on Wednesday.

Microsoft added that the fix only addresses the bug in the Microsoft Installer (.msi)-based edition of Office 2016 and doesn't apply to Office 2016 Click-to-Run editions, such as Microsoft Office 365 Home.

Until Microsoft ships a permanent solution for all affected Excel versions, the company advised impacted customers to try the "Paste Special" option.

To do that, they must select Paste Special in the "Paste" drop-down after opening the "Home" tab, then choose what to paste using the Ctrl+Alt+V keyboard shortcut: Formula, Formula and number formats, Values, Values and number formats, or Paste Link.

Affected Excel users have also reported that uninstalling the KB5002914 security update will also restore copy-and-paste functionality on impacted systems.

However, it's important to note that uninstalling this update will also remove a long list of patches for remote code execution and information disclosure vulnerabilities.

To do that, you have to open a Command Prompt window with the "Run as administrator" option and run one of the following commands (depending on your Office version):

Office 2016:
"C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\OFFICE16\Oarpmany.exe" /removereleaseinpatch "{90160000-0012-0000-1000-0000000FF1CE}" "{27882596-A8ED-4382-9C71-6CD2DD19F732}" "1033" "0"
Office 2019:
"C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\ClickToRun\OfficeC2RClient.exe" /update user updatetoversion=16.0.10417.20197
Office 2021 & 2024:
"C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\ClickToRun\OfficeC2RClient.exe" /update user updatetoversion=16.0.20326.20132

In June, Microsoft addressed another issue that blocked Windows 365 users from downloading and installing the Office suite and another one that blocked Office for the web users from opening Excel and PowerPoint files.

One month later, it also fixed an issue that prevented third-party applications from launching Microsoft Office apps like Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Access and from opening documents on up-to-date Windows systems.