I have been using EXCEL 2000 for years but a copying problem has now cropped up. I copy and paste a set of cells containing comments. It appears to work alright but the mouse symbol turns into a wineglass and I cannot do anything. Sometimes it changes to a cross and I can proceed. A message appears on the left hand bottom of the screen to the effect that I am PASTING comments. It SAYS press ESC to abort. But that does not work. I have to reboot with the loss of my most recent editing to be able to proceed.did you make any changes (hardware or software) to your computer around the time this started happening?  Does this happen with all Excel files?  If you open a NEW Excel file, enter data in a cell and add a comment to that cell, can you copy and paste it to another cell?

You MIGHT try disabling your anti-virus software and see whether that makes any difference.I have not made any changes to the software or hardware. I opened a new Excel file and typed in numbers to a group of cells. I then tried to copy them and I got as far as the dotted lines around the cells and the wineglass symbol. I now cannot get back to either of the workbooks.I believe I have solved the problem. There was an uncorrected circular reference. I have fixed that and the copying now works. That was silly of me. Thank you soybean for your suggestion.