“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
    2013-11-08T18:51:42+00:00

    Like others have pointed out, one has to start closing out programs one by one until they stop getting the annoying pop-ups, and it could differ depending on the PC.

    At my job, we don't have Skype.  We do use Microsoft Lync and it was the first thing I signed out of and closed down... bang, no more clipboard problems.  I got lucky, it was the first thing I tried closing.

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  2. Anonymous
    2013-11-08T20:07:34+00:00

    I am baffled why so many people point to other programs causing the problem.  This issue is obviously an issue with Excel.  

    This is like dealing with people.  If one person has problems with everyone you do not reprimand all the other employees you reprimand the person who is at the center of the issue.

    Excel has problems with everyone and needs to be fixed.  There is no reason a person should have to close each program on their system till they find the culprit.  Excel is still running and thus is still open.  Of course, now you have another program you may need closed.

    Microsoft, please fix the culprit.

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  3. Anonymous
    2013-12-04T12:46:55+00:00

    Until Microsoft get round to fixing Excel!

    I had the problem on a laptop running Excel Starter.

    I stopped PhraseExpress on the laptop and the problem went away.

    My desktop machine runs Excel 2007 and PhraseExpress without any problems.

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  4. Anonymous
    2014-02-07T10:30:14+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.

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  5. 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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