Why Does Windows 10/11 Copy and Paste Stop Working After A While?

Not sure it's all that helpful but here are some observations:

• The paste function is typically not working when I return to my computer after a few hours or more "away". It doesn't appear to matter whether I lock the computer or not. I think if I hibernate the computer it avoids the problem but need to test further to be sure. My "fix" is to "Restart" as it's relatively quick and always works.
• "Copy" does seem to work or at least I see copied content land in the clipboard stack.
• Some other things that tell me I have to restart.
  • The task manager can't be started from the task bar. Right mouse click on the task bar shows the menu but "Task Manager" won't highlight to be selected.
  • The computer also cannot be restarted from "Windows Start" menu with the mouse. Like the task bar behavior above I can mouse click on "Start->Power" but cannot highlight and select "Restart" (nor "Hibernate" or "Shut down" for that matter). I can however use the keyboard sequence "Win+X -> u -> r" to restart the computer (my "go to" solution)
  • Outlook classic will not let me open certain e-mails and calendar entries with a message "this item is not available right now".
  • If I go to Excel and try to cut and paste in a spreadsheet Excel will report that "The clipboard is currently in use by another program".

These other observations led me to believe it's a memory problem but I have upgraded my computer's memory and task manager (when I can get it started) doesn't indicate a memory saturation. I also changed from using Edge that is typically showing high memory usage to Brave and while Brave is noticeably faster and "lighter" it didn't change the copy/paste behavior. Note that not all these symptoms are manifest every time.

I hope this is useful, any feedback highly appreciated.

No update, still working with Level 3 support and now engineering. I'm having the same issues when waking up the P/C from sleep mode, copy and paste fails. I will forward your response to Level 3. What I'm finding is that when I talk to support it's like I'm the only person having the issue. We need more users to contact Microsoft Support and request their problem be escalated to Level 3. It took me several calls and over 2 months to get to Level 3. I'm willing to work with them to get the information needed to fix this issue.

Any update? I'm experiencing same/similar issues; mostly noticed on the day's first use when I leave the computer overnight. I suspected "memory leak" in EDGE as I don't think it's a problem if I shutdown EDGE before I let it idle but I haven't been thorough in looking at that. My reliable "fixes" are logout or rebot. Both these indicate the Windows environment and as I am typically authenticated to multiple Windows USERID in my sessions to me again point back to EDGE. I might try and live with Chrome for a day and see if it makes a difference.

My windows version: Windows 11 Home 23H2 OS build 22631.3227 WFEP 1000.22687.1000.0

FYI, I'm seeing the same behavior with Firefox and Windows 10 (22H2 build 19045.4170).

Cut (ctrl-x) works fine, Paste (ctrl-v) does not.

Killing explorer.exe in Task Manager, and re-launching it from the Task Manager Run... menu option worked for me.

No. the clipboard worked intermittently, even after stopping and starting it as Admin. I have since installed KB5034467 for 23h2 and restarted and will see how it does. Issue seemed to correspond with having many things running after a while, but not so much as to come close to lack of RAM (128GB installed) or high CPU.

I have been around many years and every time I look for a resolve to an issue there are people putting too much into it. I had an issue with copy and paste on all my computers recently and not one person said try turning the clipboard on!

Recently Microsoft updates in their infinite wisdom disabled the clipboard by default! I figured it out myself as usual.

CTR + V brings up the clipboard, and just enable it! Problem resolved!