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In Excel, imagine the following numbers in these cells:

A1: 5 B1: 6 C1: =A1+B1 [Displays 11]

A5: 7 B5: 8 C5:

If I copy cell C1 and paste into C5, rather than copy the formula, which is what I want, it only copies the value of 11. I am specifically not doing a paste-special as values. One strange thing that I have noticed is that sometimes copy-paste works fine but it seems like after a few minutes it always breaks as I have just mentioned. I know it is broken because when it works correctly, the copied cell (C1 in this example) remains highlighted and the border of the cell has the "walking ants" around its border. When Excel is not broken, the walking ants cease.

I have tried to uninstall and reinstall Excel but the issue came back rather quickly.

Does anyone know what might be going on? I use Excel 2010.

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    For future reference, if the "walking ants" disappear, that means the clipboard has changed since you told Excel to copy (or cut).
    – Bavi_H
    May 1, 2012 at 1:19

1 Answer 1

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Try paste special as formula, and if you want the destination cell show you the same formula you need to replace A1 to $A$1 and so on - that's because $A$1 - is an absolute path whereas A1 is an relative one.

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  • The paste-special as formula option is no longer an option when this error occurs. However, another forum notified me that a Skype add-in is probably causing the issue. I deleted the Skype add-in and for now Excel is working fine.
    – EK09
    Apr 15, 2012 at 22:39

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