Alt+Tab Prevents Return to Microsoft Office / Office Hangs

Question

This is a weird one. I've searched and haven't found symptoms quite like this.

I'm using Windows 10 Pro (version 1803, OS Build 17134.254) with the latest updates, along with Office Professional Plus 2016.

For the past few months, Alt+Tab has worked fine for every application EXCEPT those belonging to the Office Suite (e.g., Access, Excel, Word). If, for example, I am using Excel and I Alt+Tab to a different window, such as Chrome, I can view and interact with that window just fine.

However, I cannot return to Excel. Alt+Tab will show the icon for Excel, and even let me tab to it within the Alt+Tab window.

However, it won't actually switch me over to Excel, and leaves Excel in the background. Clicking on the Excel icon in the task bar does not return it to the foreground. If I hover over the Excel icon in the task bar, it will show a preview, but that's it.

The only way to return to any Office app is to minimize everything on the screen by clicking to the right of the date.

Then, faced with my desktop, I can click Excel and it will regain focus, allowing me to edit it.

When I'm using dual monitors and I Alt+Tab away from Excel, it remains open and visible in my other monitor. However, I cannot click on it or interact with it in any way without doing the whole minimize thing I mentioned above.

Oddly, again, this only applies to Office apps. All other open tabs work just fine.

Here's what I've tried so far:

• Edit the AltTabSettings DWORD at HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer
• Deleted the AltTabSettings DWORD
• Confirmed Peek option is enabled
• Changed "Turn off Windows Key hotkeys" from Not Configured to Enabled.
• Changed same setting to Disabled

Granted, the above troubleshooting steps are typically done when Alt+Tab doesn't work at all, but I thought I'd give them a shot.

No luck.

Any suggestions on what I should try next?

EDIT 1:

Interestingly, this happens as well when pressing Alt+F11 in Microsoft Access to view the VBA window. I can't click on Access and the VBA icon doesn't appear in the task bar until I minimize everything to view the desktop. Then the second icon appears and I can again interact with Access.

EDIT 2:

For clarity, I'm adding here that I also tried repairing Office.

Answer 1

SOLVED! It turns out display drivers are implicated with this type of problem. I had two drivers installed: Intel HD Graphics 4000 and NVIDIA NVS 5400M. The Intel driver wasn't the issue.

I had NVIDIA NVS 5400M, version 23.21.13.8908, Driver Date 2/27/2018 installed. "Update Driver" via Device Manager didn't find any updates. However, I checked NVIDIA's site and found an update there. Updating to 23.21.13.9200, Driver Date 8/30/2018 solved the issue.