Kill marching ants

[Giordano Bruno]

Am I the only person in the world with this problem? When copying a range, I used to be able to hit the Esc key and the source would be lost. Now this has no effect and the ants continue to march around the copy range so that the next time I try to insert some cells, the source cells are copied also. The only solution I've found is to press Ctrl-x then Enter.

 

[footoo]

Sounds like a keyboard problem :
keyboard esc key not working - Google 搜尋

 

[FDibbins]

Im using 2013, and esc works for me.

 

[Giordano Bruno]

Thanks footoo and FD,

I'm glad to get some feedback even if the problem is not solved. I'm running Office 365 and Excel 16. Curiously, I have found that Shift-Esc works.

 

[footoo]

Thanks footoo and FD,

I'm glad to get some feedback even if the problem is not solved. I'm running Office 365 and Excel 16. Curiously, I have found that Shift-Esc works.

This link might shed some light:
Fix: Esc key not working in Windows 10

Extract:

1. Use SHIFT + Escape
Like I said in the first paragraph, the ease with which the Escape key could be used in the past posed a lot of problems if it was pressed by accident. This is why most of the newer applications have now switched to using the SHIFT + Escape keys combination.
For example Google Chrome uses the SHIFT + Escape keys combination to give you access to its internal task manager, as you can see in the image below.