XL2000: Cut and Paste Operation in Visual Basic Procedure Hangs Excel

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This article was previously published under Q231144

Symptoms

When you run a Microsoft Visual Basic for Applications procedure, you receive the following error message

Run-time error '-2147417848 (80010108)':

Automation error

and Microsoft Excel appears to stop responding. You can click the menus and toolbar buttons, but you cannot select any cells on the worksheet.

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Cause

This problem occurs when the following conditions are true:

The procedure contains a line of code similar to the following:
Range("a1").Cut Destination:=Range("c3")
-and-
You have applied Conditional Formatting rules to the cells that the procedure is cutting.

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Workaround

Microsoft provides programming examples for illustration only, without warranty either expressed or implied. This includes, but is not limited to, the implied warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose. This article assumes that you are familiar with the programming language that is being demonstrated and with the tools that are used to create and to debug procedures. Microsoft support engineers can help explain the functionality of a particular procedure, but they will not modify these examples to provide added functionality or construct procedures to meet your specific requirements. To work around this problem, use the Copy and ClearContents methods instead of the Cut method. The following sample macro demonstrates how to do this:

Sub WorkAroundCut()
        ' The line below
        ' Range("a1").Cut Destination:=Range("c3")
        ' can be replaced by the following 2 lines 
	Range("a1").Copy Destination:=Range("c3")
	Range("a1").ClearContents
End Sub

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