Forum Discussion
My MS-Excel window goes black partially and intermittently.
- I already solved this issue. In case someone out there has the same problem, here is the proven solution:
Disable the graphics acceleration:
1. From Excel's main menu select Options.
2. At Excel Options window, choose Advanced on the left pane.
3. At the right pane, under Display options, CHECK the "Disable hardware graphics acceleration" checkbox and click OK.
This solution was provided on September 2022 by: Ravikumar Vadamalai, Independent Advisor, Microsoft Community.
Greetings to the Microsoft Tech Community.
Disable the graphics acceleration:
1. From Excel's main menu select Options.
2. At Excel Options window, choose Advanced on the left pane.
3. At the right pane, under Display options, CHECK the "Disable hardware graphics acceleration" checkbox and click OK.
This solution was provided on September 2022 by: Ravikumar Vadamalai, Independent Advisor, Microsoft Community.
Greetings to the Microsoft Tech Community.
ElizabethAnneVH I don't have that option in the right side?! "Disable hardware graphics acceleration" checkbox that is. What to do next?
veebee7 You can try disabling graphics acceleration from Windows settings. Of course, this will affect graphics performance of all your apps, like games, but it may solve your screen issues in Excel app.
To disable graphics acceleration from Windows settings go to:
System --> Display --> Graphics --> Default graphics settings --> Turn off the Optimizations option
If you don´t have any option available for disabling graphics acceleration (neither in Excel app nor in Windows Settings), then it is possible that your hardware does not support graphics acceleration. In this case, there is nothing you can do through this configuration. You will need to look for other configuration options.
Best regards,
Elízabeth Anne Villegas
México.
I'm finally jumping in after finding this thread... I've been dealing with this for several years now.
A client and I both use Excel (I'm on 16.0.18 in Windows 10 Pro 22H2) with massive spreadsheets, containing charts and graphs and images embedded in them. We both deal with this every day. She has a high-end workstation with a monster graphics card. I have a high-end Mac running windows in a virtual machine. I have played with all kinds of VM graphics and RAM settings to no avail. Excel is the only app having this problem in Windows 10 and it is a royal pain. I have searched the forums looking for answers, and have found everything people are saying here: the option to disable graphics acceleration was removed from Windows 10, registry editing hacks do not fix the issue, and I just tried disabling the gaming option that you had recommended but it didn't work either (I closed and restarted Excel and it seemed to a help for a few minutes but then went back to the same garbled text, locked up the Excel window, and blacked out contents). Extremely frustrating. Much of the time I can overcome it by switching tabs and it seems that Excel will re-generate the sheet contents when I do that. However, sometimes that does not work and the only option is to use hotkeys to save and close Excel.
This is a mainstream product. Is this issue only seen by a handful of people??
Not much I can do here, but I've tried both High and Power-saving.There is no longer an option to disable hardware acceleration.
Colin95 I am sorry for the limitations you are experiencing with MS Excel app. So far, it seems this problem is being experienced by a small number of users. However, that fact does not eliminates the annoying experience suffered by those people.
Why you have not upgraded to Windows 11? Currently, I am using a strange combination of Windows 11 with Excel 2019, and I could solve the blacking-screen issue successfully. This might work for you, as well. Really, I do not understand why some Excel apps have the "disable graphics acceleration" option and others do not. It could be due to the diverse Excel app versions or editions... of course. Another workaround is using a different device, which uses different graphics hardware. This is not a proven solution, but it might work, as well.
Thank you for writing. I am sure that the experience shared by every user like you counts in the cyberspace and the "market-space", so that Microsoft, sooner or later, puts attention to this issue.
Best regards,
Elízabeth Anne, Mexico.