“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

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  1. Anonymous
    2015-02-22T08:55:53+00:00

    And all they need to do to sort this out, ALL they need to do... is disable the dialog.

    I agree. Excel is the culprit all through this thread. Closing other apps is just a workround.

    With nothing in the clipboard all is well. Do first select, drag and place OK. Subsequent ones are OK but you get the stupid error popup.

    I dont think Microsoft respond to custoner complaints (i.e. do customer service) anymore. Be nice to be proven wrong though.

    Ed

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  2. Anonymous
    2013-01-26T13:36:08+00:00

    This is now a known issue with Bing Desktop, and it would be best if you provide a feedback to Microsoft regarding this.

    You may provide your feedback/suggestions regarding Microsoft Bing in the link mentioned below:

    https://feedback.discoverbing.com/default.aspx?productkey=bing

    Note: You can use the same link to provide feedback for Bing Desktop.

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  3. Anonymous
    2014-02-07T17:29:54+00:00

    I faced this issue and found that the logging feature enabled with one of the ftp clients (winscp) have caused the error. I have turned off the logging feature and still faced this issue, once I terminated that program, the issue resolved.

    The responses concerning this issue have continuously pointed towards other programs needing to be closed to halt this issue.  I have tried closing numerous programs and may stop it for a while but then have the problem come back after a while.

    Due to the fact that this is a constant issue with Excel; closing numerous other programs is not the solution.  This is a temporary fix to a permanent issue.

    Microsoft,  please tell us what we can do within Excel to stop this problem.  Excel is an enterprise class product and should not have issues that would normally be sound in Beta products.

    Deron Braun

    Support Engineer

    Tech Data Corporation

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  4. Anonymous
    2013-01-07T21:30:16+00:00

    I don't have Bing Desktop and I get the same error message, from time to time. If I stop and save my workbook, the error message doesn't appear for a while. It seems to pop up when I am doing a lot of copying and pasting without saving in between. But, I didn't have a problem with this message until after I changed from excel 2007 to 2010.

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  5. Anonymous
    2012-11-14T13:14:20+00:00

    Maybe some other programs IS using the clipboard. Start the computer in clean boot and then see if you’re able to copy-past in excel without issues. Clean boot should disable all other third party apps.

    Refer this link - http://support.microsoft.com/kb/929135

    If it copying works fine in clean boot, then you should do trial and error to find out which app is causing the issue. Try enabling the ones you suspect the most and check the status to find out.

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