“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
    2015-03-24T16:17:31+00:00

    This also occurs if you have file explorer open and in preview mode. 

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  2. Anonymous
    2015-03-09T03:36:29+00:00

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  3. 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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  4. Anonymous
    2015-02-22T01:47:52+00:00

    I know this is an old thread but the problem remains with Win 8.1 and Excel 2010.

    Indeed it does. I can't believe the extent to which Microsoft just doesn't care about this blight on usability and, by extension, its customers. Some idiot in there seems to have a fixation on more dialogs, ever more dialogs, even though they may do nothing useful and indeed obstruct you from doing anything useful.

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

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  5. Anonymous
    2015-02-21T12:04:22+00:00

    I know this is an old thread but the problem remains with Win 8.1 and Excel 2010.

    After fresh start can drag and drop cells ok. Dried to drag and drop again and get the stupid error message. This implies that "another program" using the clipboard is Excel. As the drag and drop actions do infact work, I have just got used to clicking the [OK] box from the error message and carrying on. I do not have Zonealarm, Skype Add-on, Nokia Suite, or VNC viewer.

    This is a long running and very annoying irritation affecting the most used application of Office 2010 IMO.

    It irritates me furher in that you can't actually see which application has grabbed the clipboard. So you end up chasing shadows and closing down possible processes without any effect.

    Ed

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