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

I have been able to eliminate the Excel clipboard error issue by opening up a blank document in Word and cutting (right click) and pasting a cell from Excel into the blank Word document. After that, Excell works fine, and it's goodbye to the annoying "Clipboard cannot be emptied..." popup error. You will also notice that when you now do a drag and drop in Excel, it happens instantaneously (as expected). You can close Word after doing the cut and past workaround, and everything will still be fine with Excel. However you will have to go through this procedure every time your reboot your PC and open Excel again.

I hope other Excel users can replicate this workaround and maybe MS will pick up on it

I don't mean to belittle your efforts, but I'm afraid that's nonsensical. And I mean that in the literal sense, not the put-down sense. Also, although I tried it on the off chance... it doesn't work. I followed your instructions, then did a few things that I knew would randomly (that being the key word) trigger the error and sure enough, within 5 minutes I had it back.

Think about it for a minute, and I mean that expression in all seriousness; why would pasting something from Excel into Word when you start Excel have any effect on clipboard operations that might occur 2, 3, 4 hours later maybe?

The one, the ONLY thing that Microsoft needs to pick up on is to make this accursed, pointless, useless dialog killable. "Do not show this again. Ever. And that goes for most of the pointless, irritating dialogs that MS has made since Vista". I don't even care if it takes (yet another) Registry hack. The problem with this one is that it's so random and so pervasive and so disruptive AND so unkillable that it's just another nail that MS is hammering into its own coffin.

Note the absence of any MS representatives in here acknowledging the problem, much less promising a solution. When, not if, WHEN Google get serious about transforming Google Sheets into something more than the toys that they are now, what will MS have left? Dialogs that irritate he living bejeezes out of people for versions on end with no attempt to fix the problems.

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.

Alas, Microsoft has chosen to ignore our cries for assistance on these bugs.  

It seems that only a few people on this forum have even blamed Excel for the being the culprit.  I really don't get it gang.  This is no different than if you blamed everyone else for one bad employee's inability to get along.  Excel keeps crying for no reason and makes everyone else stop and look.  

Time we send Excel to time-out.

db

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

Amen that, brother! I have this problem only intermittently on my home machines but it's like one of the ten plagues of Egypt on the machines that I use at work. To make it go away one, ONE, ONLY one thing needs to happen... and that's for MS to release a patch for Excel that removes the brain dead bit of code that shows this dialog. The clipboard cannot be emptied? Great, good for the clipboard. But Microsoft, here's the thing that you just don't seem to understand... I. Don't Give. A. S***. I really, truly don't. The fact that the clipboard cannot be emptied has never once affected me doing what I'm doing except for the need to close that useless sodding dialog.

I can't recall whether this is one of the many, many dialogs that have a "Was this helpful?" link for the customer improvement program but if not, it should be even at the risk of wearing out my mouse clicking on the NO! button. The thing that goes beyond irritating and toward the border of infuriating is that on NONE of the dialogs which have a Customer Improvement "was this helpful" link is there a "Never, ever show me this waste of time again" checkbox. The fact that MS has seen fit to include the "was this helpful" question suggests that somewhere, deep in the bowels of Redmond, someone has a sneaking suspicion that the dialogs are a complete waste of time and an irritation to the user. And yet, MS provides them with no easy way and/or no way at all of turning them off. The "The File You Are Trying To Open is in a different format" dialog, I'm glaring with contempt at you as well, though it doesn't screw up my work experience quite as badly as the Clipboard one. And at least the extension hardening one has a Registry hack which lets you turn it off which as far as I know the Clipboard waste of space doesn't.

I swear, Microsoft seems to have learnt absolutely nothing from the revulsion that the marketplace felt for Vista, in no small part because it kept throwing pointless dialogs in your face.

If anyone from Microsoft actually bothers reading these posts, then I suggest that before you alienate any more users, you do something about fixing things like this. It's not like you can afford to take your user base for granted any more.

Finally another somewhat sane person appears.  I was beginning to think I was the only one who understood that this wasn't a problem with all the other products but a problem with Excel.  Perhaps someday they will fix it.  and perhaps someday Bill G. will hire me on for a million a year to be his court jester.

db

Is the computer on a domain/network?

Does the issue happen with shared Excel files?

Check if the issue occurs while working with un-shared Excel files that are stored locally on the computer.

If the Excel files are accessed by multiple users over a network, you may post your query in the Excel IT Pro forum, for better suggestions on this issue.

http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en/excel/threads