This is a frustrating bug, and it is one that should not exist. When a user highlights text inside a cell and presses Ctrl+C, the software should copy exactly what was selected. That is the basic expectation of any text-editing interface, and Excel has handled it correctly for decades. To have that behavior suddenly break, without warning, without a changelog entry, is a failure of quality assurance, not a feature regression.
For the user who reported this, and for anyone else affected, the immediate impact is a loss of trust in a tool they rely on for precision. Copying a partial string from a cell is a micro-movement in countless workflows: extracting a product code, isolating a date, pulling a name from a formatted list. When that micro-movement fails, every macro-level process built on top of it becomes suspect. You cannot confidently build a report or a model if the fundamental copy-paste contract is broken.
What makes this especially concerning is the silence. The user notes that no one else seems to be talking about it. That suggests the bug may be tied to a narrow update path, a specific Windows build, or a regional setting. But for the people hitting it, that context does not matter. What matters is that yesterday their muscle memory worked, and today it does not. A temporary workaround, double-clicking into the cell and then selecting the text again, might restore partial copy behavior, but it is a workflow tax that should never have been imposed.
Our opinion is plain: this is the kind of bug that erodes confidence in a mature product. Excel has earned its place through reliability, not through novelty. When a core function like text selection breaks, the company behind the tool owes its users a clear explanation and a fast fix, not radio silence. If you are experiencing this issue, let the support channels know. The more voices, the sooner this gets prioritized. And if you are not experiencing it yet, pay attention, because the next update could break something you rely on just as much.