“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
    2016-10-12T22:59:56+00:00

    For everyone who is affected by this, I've raised a request to get rid of it on the (relatively) little-known User Voice site:

    Link to User Voice here.

    Adding your voice and votes to this may or may not help... but it certainly can't hurt.

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  2. Anonymous
    2016-05-12T07:16:32+00:00

    I had this error message in Excel 2010 while Outlook was working in the backgroung. Shutting down Outlook solved this problem.

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  3. Anonymous
    2016-04-04T10:37:13+00:00

    Yes, there's only one common  denominator at play here.

    I think there's a clue about Microsoft's own cluelessness about what is causing it in the error message itself.

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  4. Anonymous
    2016-04-04T07:27:54+00:00

    Hi Great Southern Hairy Nosed Wombat

    Yes I totally agree with you and share your frustrations with Microsoft over this issue.

    It is indeed very poor form that users have to go to such lengths to achieve a workaround to a problem which Microsoft has created and then just chosen to ignore.

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  5. Anonymous
    2016-04-04T04:32:22+00:00

    Thanks GlenAustralia, but as others have commented, the "culprit" is not Nokia Suite (which I don't use), nor is it ZoneAlarm (which I do), nor is it ANY other third-party app - the culprit is Microsoft Excel itself.

    If running two completely separate dedicated PCs - one especially for Nokia Suite and one especially for Excel - seems an acceptable resolution for you, then so be it.

    But personally I think that's a bit much to ask of each and every Excel user - and there appear to be many - who's afflicted by this issue, which MS has had several YEARS to reply to and resolve, and which they pointedly have failed to do either.

    I don't mean to bemoan MS in a general sense - personally I have found their tech support in other areas to be first-class - but in this particular instance, it can't be denied that it's been simply appalling (in the sense of being non-existent).

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