Excel 2016 / 2019 — Copy & Paste Broken After September 2026 Update
Excel 2016 — Copy & Paste Broken After September 2026 Update
Microsoft update KB5002914 (released September 9, 2026) breaks standard paste in Excel 2016. Only Paste Special → Values continues to work. Office 2016 is end-of-life and will not receive an official fix.
- Ctrl+C appears to work — marching ants border appears — but Ctrl+V does nothing
- Right-click → Paste also fails — the menu option is present but does nothing
- Standard paste fails even on a fresh blank workbook — not file-specific
- Paste Special → Values works correctly as a temporary workaround
Update KB5002914 modifies how Excel 2016 handles its internal rich clipboard format (Biff/XLSX on clipboard). The standard Paste command relies on this format; Paste Special bypasses it by reading plain text directly from the Windows clipboard. Since Office 2016 reached end-of-life on October 14, 2025, Microsoft will not release a patch.
Uninstall KB5002914
Determine your Office installation type first — the uninstall method differs.
Open Installed Updates
Navigate to Control Panel → Programs → View installed updates
Find and uninstall KB5002914
Search for KB5002914 in the search box. Right-click → Uninstall. Restart when prompted.
wusa /uninstall /kb:5002914 /quiet /norestart
Block the update from reinstalling
Download and run Microsoft’s “Show or Hide Updates” tool, then hide KB5002914.
Get-HotFix | Where-Object {$_.HotFixID -eq "KB5002914"}No output = successfully removed. Restart Excel and test paste.
Confirm the affected build
File → Account → About Excel should show version 16.0.5569.1003. Click-to-Run cannot uninstall individual updates — you must roll back the entire Office version.
Roll back to the previous build
Close all Office applications, then run from an elevated Command Prompt:
rem Navigate to the Click-to-Run client folder cd "C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\ClickToRun" rem Roll back to build 16.0.5563.1000 (pre-September 9) OfficeC2RClient.exe /update user updatetoversion=16.0.5563.1000
Freeze automatic updates
To prevent Office from updating itself back to the broken build:
OfficeC2RClient.exe /blockuninstall
Or disable automatic updates via File → Account → Update Options → Disable Updates.
Use Paste Special → Values while the fix is applied
Instead of Ctrl+V, use:
Ctrl + Alt + V → select Values → OK
Or right-click the destination cell → Paste Special → Values.
Office 2016 is fully end-of-life
Microsoft ended all support for Office 2016 on October 14, 2025. We recommend planning migration to Microsoft 365 Apps or Office LTSC 2021 to avoid recurring breakage.
Some time you can not see the updates KB5002914 in the list and the WUSA do not remove it manually. the solution is to install it separately . download it from here :
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=108804
Then uninstall it from Control panel -> Programs > Programs and Features -> Installed Updates . After removing KB5002914 , the copy&paste works again
Another solution is just to remove or roll back the update and restore functionality of office to previous version, run this from Powershell as Administrator :
& "C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\OFFICE16\Oarpmany.exe" /removereleaseinpatch "{90160000-0012-0000-1000-0000000FF1CE}" "{27882596-A8ED-4382-9C71-6CD2DD19F732}" '1036' "0"
works perfect for 3pc’s i have !