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

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.

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.

Thank you for the information, I have passed on the information to Level 3 because I'm having the exact same issues. The problem appears to be in clipboard and not Office. I'm thinking of upgrading to Windows 11 Pro instead of Home. I continue to work with Level 3 when it fails, and they continue to copy logs from my P/C along with screen videos. I'm not running any 3rd party software, just straight out of the box from Dell. Dell has offered no help except wanting to charge me $90 and no guarantee for a fix.

FWIW, running those applications as administrator isn't having any effect to fix the problem. As soon as you restart the computer, it reverts back to the previous run permissions.

What is actually fixing the problem, is that you are rebooting.

Don't waste your money. This problem also exists in W11 Pro. It won't fix it.