Microsoft fixed Excel 2016 copy-paste bug. Then reintroduced it. Now it's fixed again

All of this has happened before. All of this will happen again. Maybe

The Excel copy-and-paste bug is back, which means Microsoft is making a second round of fixes.

The bug first appeared in the September update and manifested in multiple versions of Excel as a silent failure of the paste operation. Users copied content and attempted to paste it, but the destination cell was unchanged no matter how hard they mashed the Ctrl+V keys. Microsoft fixed it in mid-September. But it made a comeback in Excel 2016 when users installed October's security update. 

Microsoft has now released a new build of Excel 2016 to address the reintroduction of the bug: build 16.0.5574.1006. The company wrote: "The new build includes all security updates for Microsoft Excel 2016, and also fixes the issue that was reintroduced in 16.0.5574.1005, in which paste operations might fail if the workbook contains conditional formatting."

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Microsoft did not explain how the bug slipped back in. Copy and paste is, after all, a niche bit of functionality.

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Users reported the recurrence of the bug in October after the KB5002934 update was applied. Rolling back the update resolved the problem until Windows Update pushed the patch again. KB5002934 is a security update that resolves glitches including remote code execution and information disclosure vulnerabilities.

The problem affects only Excel 2016 and is not the result of the latest Windows security update. Rather, it was reintroduced in an Excel update delivered through Windows Update. A user in a Microsoft Excel forum said the issue had appeared on workstations throughout their organization. "What's frustrating is that this is the same issue we encountered before, which was supposedly fixed in a previous update. Now it's back, barely a few weeks later."

And now, at least, it appears to be fixed once again. Still, if Microsoft is determined to reintroduce bugs into Excel, perhaps it might also be tempted to bring back the Hall of Tortured Souls (a secret first-person 3D mini-game hidden inside Microsoft Excel for Windows 95) and populate it with the testers who managed to miss the issue's resurrection. ®