Visual glitches when using Microsoft Excel 2010

Since 20/4/15 I have had three users experiencing the same visual glitches when using Excel. Images from windows which are behind the active Excel window show through the active Excel window - see http://i.imgur.com/sl5yU3p.png

Other images show through the window too (not just desktop icons), such as open PDF files, windows explorer items etc.

One user reported experiencing the problem when using their roaming profile through a VPN.

I have rebooted the users' machines, turned off Windows animations, reinstalled graphics drivers, ran a repair on Office and disabled visual themes as well as desktop composition under Excel's compatibility settings. None of these fixes have resolved the issues.

Please advise as to possible solutions.

May 4th, 2015 4:36pm

Hi WilliamFJWilson,

Based on your description, could you tell me which version of Windows are you using? If it is only occurred in excel? Or if it cause in other programs? I couldnt reproduce your issue in my own environment.

With your showing in the figure, it seems this issue is occurred by Windows explorer no responding. I suggest you to restart explorer.exe in your computer and check if it works fine.

To properly restart Explorer.exe, follow these simple steps:

  1. Click the Start button.
  2. Press CTRL + SHIFT, right-click on an empty area in the Start menu. Youll see a menu with two options, Exit Explorer and Properties.
  3. Select the Exit Explorer command. Start menu, Taskbar and Desktop will the closed and the other applications will continue to run in the background.
  4. To manually start a new Explorer.exe, press CTRL+ALT+DELETE to launch Task Manager.
  5. Now go to File > New Task(Run)
  6. Now simply type explorer.exe in the new task box to restart the explorer.

If the issue still exists, could you be a bit more precise explain your problem so that we can get more accurate solutions to this problem.

George Zhao
TechNet Community Support

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May 6th, 2015 9:09pm

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