Microsoft has confirmed several issues affecting Microsoft 365 customers using the “paste special’ option and the calendar feature in the classic Outlook email client.
As the company explains, users in the Current Channel trying to use the Ctrl+Alt+V paste special keyboard shortcut will see that it doesn’t work after updating to Version 2503 Build 18623.20156 because of changes introduced to this feature by the Word Team in August 2024.
“This issue is happening because of recent changes to shortcuts implemented by the Word Team, see blog article Paste Text Only shortcut in Word. Outlook gets the shortcut shared from Word. The article explains that you can restore the shortcuts and that will work for Word, but it does not work in Outlook,” the Outlook Team says.
While a fix was already developed, it will start rolling out to users in the Beta Channel in early May and to Current Channel Preview in early June, while Current Channel users will only get it around late June after updating to Version 2506 Build 18925.20000.
Microsoft also advises using the Alt+HVS shortcut to open the ‘Paste Special‘ dialog or the ‘Paste Special ‘ option on the Ribbon as a temporary workaround.
However, those who need the fix sooner can switch to the Beta Channel by adding a registry key via the following steps:
- Open a ‘Command Prompt’ window with ‘Run as administrator’ for Administrator context.
- Paste the command below and press Enter:
reg add HKLM\Software\Policies\Microsoft\office\16.0\common\officeupdate /v updatebranch /t REG_SZ /d BetaChannel - After you add the registry key, select File > Office Account > Update Options, then ‘Update Now’ to initiate the switch to Beta Channel.
This week, the Outlook Team also mitigated a known issue causing Outlook Calendars to render blank sections in Calendar View for users with multiple calendars enabled.
The known issue has been fixed by making a service change, and affected users are advised to restart classic Outlook to pick up the change.
In January, Microsoft also fixed a classic Outlook issue behind email client freezes when copying text with the CTRL+C keyboard shortcut.
More recently, it announced a fix for an Outlook bug triggering CPU spikes when typing messages and resolved a known issue breaking drag-and-drop after installing February 2025 Windows updates.
