Excel crashing on copy/paste or right click crash[resolved]

Dimitris Moutsatsos
2 min readJul 9, 2019

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This weekend I've got a problem with Excel. A very strange problem. Every time i was trying to copy paste with ctrl+c , ctrl+v or with right click, excel was crashing.

The problem

First things first, before the problem, i was running Microsoft Excel 2010 in a Virtualbox 5.2.26 with Windows 7 64bit (Macbook , Yosemite as the host) without any problems. I’ve decided to upgrade to the latest version of Excel by purchasing a office 365 home subscription license.

Then the problems started. First in order to complete install without any errors Office 365 you must perform full update @ Windows 7 OS and install .NET framework 4.5.2. Of course update also Internet Explorer.

After this everything was working great except Excel. Excel was very slow , and keep crashing (30 seconds halt) in right click and copy paste. I though that my decision to install 32bit version of Excel was wrong . So I've uninstalled and install the 64bit version of Excel. Again the same issue.

I was thinking that a COM add-in was making the problem but no add-ins installed so that was not the issue. Then i check the XLSTART folder to check maybe a VBA macro make the damage. Again no result. Safe mode, run as administrator…. and nothing.. Excel was doing the same crash.

I google it. I google a lot , i tried all the answers ( ignore DDE, disable hardware acceleration in excel, disable protected mode) without any success.

Then my focus turned on Virtualbox. Disable 2D video acceleration, update the virtual box to 5.2.30. Excel was doing the same thing. BUT when i remove the virtualbox guest utils( no vga, no share folders etc) Excel was working.

My next guess is that something was happening with the video driver or direct 3d support of virtualbox. After a lot of tests my final working solution is to install everything and then go to Advanced System Settings ( Control Panel\All Control Panel Items\System ) , Advanced , Performance and select adjust for best performance or custom.

Then my 48 hour troubleshooting adventure finally completed and Excel was working as expected.

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Dimitris Moutsatsos
Dimitris Moutsatsos

Written by Dimitris Moutsatsos

developer and weirdo / current: FinTech Insights / Tychetech / Resitech

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