“The Clipboard cannot be emptied. Another program might be using the Clipboard” Oct 2012 Office 2010 Excel.

Anonymous
2012-10-15T04:13:46+00:00

“The Clipboard cannot be emptied. Another program might be using the Clipboard” Oct 2012 Office 2010 Excel.

Some of our users get this error when working on xlsx spread sheets, The Clipboard cannot be emptied. Another program might be using the Clipboard.”

This occurs on different spreadsheets on a company SOE. I myself have also experienced it and have disabled various add-ons as per some of what the forums suggest. Various forums suggest various fixes – from what I can gether thus far is there is no silver bullet fix for this as of yet. Microsoft from what little results appear in Bing or Google don’t show much – I was hoping for  someone to advise if this fix had been rolled up in fix or patch…

Can anyone also advise if this error appears for them and what they did to fix it – if fixed at all?

Many thanks in advance.

Ps. Here are some links I have attached.

http://www.treeplan.com/clipboard-cannot-be-emptied-error.htm

http://www.fmsinc.com/MicrosoftAccess/Errors/ExcelPaste/Clipboard.html

http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/office/forum/office_2010-excel/the-clipboard-cannot-be-emptied-in-excel/4b367423-6c7b-4fc7-9203-23c866255d60?page=4

http://excelribbon.tips.net/T009810_Cant_Empty_the_Clipboard.html

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/1wyab60d(VS.90).aspx

http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Search/en-US?query=The%20clipboard%20cannot%20be%20emptied%20in%20Excel&ac=8

Microsoft 365 and Office | Excel | For home | Windows

Locked Question. This question was migrated from the Microsoft Support Community. You can vote on whether it's helpful, but you can't add comments or replies or follow the question.

0 comments No comments

63 answers

Sort by: Most helpful
  1. Anonymous
    2017-04-22T21:29:26+00:00

    2017 and still the issue is not resolved.

    I'm using Outlook 2007 and Excel 2010.

    I close Outlook before running Excel or open Excel before running Outlook and it stops the error for the day.

    Was this answer helpful?

    0 comments No comments
  2. Anonymous
    2016-11-05T02:19:46+00:00

    Wow, tone! This bug annoys me but obviously REALLY bugs you.

    I get that the error is in Excel, i thought that was obvious, I guess what I should have said was:

    "OMG!!! It is Outlook activating the bug in Excel for me"

    I was just really excited that I can now work in Excel without the frustration.

    Thanks for your helpful feedback though. Don't suppose you can help with the "right click, paste" action in the filter search box can you?

    :-)

    Yes, "tone" for the reason that I said.  As long as this bug is being ascribed to other products (something which has been disconcertingly pervasive in this thread), Microsoft has no reason to fix it. If you would like to be helpful yourself, please make sure that you go to the UserVoice link in the post before your one and cast a couple of votes (and possibly even add a comment) to get it fixed. Because if you never see that dialog again (and trust me, that is not guaranteed, Outlook or not), it's because you've been lucky, not cured.

    As to the other question, I assume that you're referring to the absence of a right click (context) menu with a Paste option? I believe it's just that Microsoft hasn't defined a menu for that control. This doesn't seem to be a new thing; I don't see it in Excel 2016, Excel 2010 or even in the (roughly) equivalent dialog in Excel 2003.

    Was this answer helpful?

    0 comments No comments
  3. Anonymous
    2016-11-03T22:19:10+00:00

    Wow, tone! This bug annoys me but obviously REALLY bugs you.

    I get that the error is in Excel, i thought that was obvious, I guess what I should have said was:

    "OMG!!! It is Outlook activating the bug in Excel for me"

    I was just really excited that I can now work in Excel without the frustration.

    Thanks for your helpful feedback though. Don't suppose you can help with the "right click, paste" action in the filter search box can you?

    :-)

    Was this answer helpful?

    0 comments No comments