How to disable “marching ants” from overriding my external clipboard data in Excel 2016?

Did the copy-and-paste behavior change in Excel 2016?

Every time I want to copy something from an external application, I have to press Esc first in Excel 2016 to cancel the marching ants (selection marquee border) and then copy and paste the data from an external application.

In Excel 2013, I did not have to cancel the marching ants. Copying data from an external application would cancel the marching ants automatically and allow me to paste the data into Excel.

Having to press Esc every time I need to paste is very annoying. How do I disable this, or how do I restore the behavior of older Excel versions?

1 Answer

Did the copy-and-paste behavior change in Excel 2016?

Yes, There are no more "marching ants". It's just a dotted line/box now.

If you leave/lose focus on Excel, the selection remains. However, if you select something it will still remain. But, if you "copy" a selection from another source, the "marching ants", now dashed box lines, will be gone.