Copy "Marching Ants" randomly stops working--indicates excel likely to crash

[mallsbrow]

Hi, I have been having this problem for quite some time. My IT folks have upgrade my Microsoft office to 2016... however, the problem still happens. Randomly when I copy a cell the boarder no longer appears... I have found this to be an indicator that my excel is going to crash --- or "stop working" I would like to figure out the root cause of this, so that I can fix the problem. My work around is when the marching ants stop appearing I will close all of my spreadsheets and reopen them... this will avoid any loss of data. I do have the auto save-but, still I would like for Excel to stop crashing... this issue happens multiple times a day... help!

 

[SpillerBD]

... I will close all of my spreadsheets and reopen them...

How much memory is being used for all these Workbooks?
Are there any Event based Macros in use?
Which bit-version did your IT folks install, 32 or 64-bit?
Are there any Add-Ins in use?

 

[mallsbrow]

To find the memory I need to look at the task manager and processes-correct? If so I'm using about 133K
No macros
32-Bit
Add-ins are:
Analysis Toolpak-VBA
MS Power Map for for excel
MS Power Pivot for excel
Oracle smart view for Office

 

[SpillerBD]

Unless you are actively using the PowerMap add-in I would remove it.
Your more like possibility is that there is an unspecified corruption with one of the files you are working in. I had a book that kept making Excel quit with no warnings or errors...
MS quit supporting the PoweMap as that got rolled into PowerBI for Desktop.
For you, when Excel crashes, do you get any error message?

 

[mallsbrow]

I've removed PowerMap add-in. Should I remove the MS Power Pivot and MS Power View (I forgot to list this one) There's never an error message when it crashes. Is there a way I can check to see if I have a corruption with a file? This doesn't just happen with specific files-it is totally random... the only thing I've noticed as a warning is that the marching ants stop appearing.

 

[SpillerBD]

There was a file inspector to available from MS, but I haven't used in a while.
I am still running MS Power Pivot and MS PowerView addins.

The only file that may be common is your "personal.xlsb" file. I never chased anything down in mine. However, my problems never occurred at a different machine that I had transferred my personal vba to by copying that file.
There could also be corruption from your default templates.... If your defaults aren't suppose to be special, you can delete them and the application will recreate them.

Check the Microsoft CAT, Configuration Analyzer Tool
MSDN can also provide different insights for solutions.

If you need 32-bit for API use, keep the 32-bit. Otherwise, the 64-bit will perform better especially if you are using PowerBI tools. I don't know that MS fixed the memory leak issues of the 32-bit versions in 2016. I still see it in my 2013-32bit version.