Clipboard problem in Excel 2016

Anonymous

I am running Excel 2016 on a Windows 10 Machine.

When I copy a cell (or cut a cell, or move a cell) I get one of two error messages:

"Cannot open the Clipboard"

"We couldn't free up space on the Clipboard. Another program might be using it right now."

I am then able to successfully paste what Excel told me it could not copy. To restate for clarity...Excel throws error messages, but I am able to successfully copy and paste.

The problem is that it throws the error messages every single time I try and copy or cut or whatever.

Things I have tried:

I've ensured all other programs are not running (or using the clip board)

I've cleared the %temp% folder

I've cleared the Clipboard within Excel

Word does not have this problem...

Please help.

Locked Question. This question was migrated from the Microsoft Support Community. You can vote on whether it's helpful, but you can't add comments or replies or follow the question.

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Anonymous

Hello,

I have an update on this error dialog: “There's a problem with the clipboard, but you can still paste your content within this workbook."

When Excel shows this dialog after a copy (CTRL+C) action, it means that another app has a lock on the system clipboard. In this situation you can still paste within Excel. However you cannot paste to another app like Word or Outlook which uses the clipboard.

Last year we made some improvements to Office365 users so that this error message only shows once per Excel instance. This is based on customer feedback - the design change prevents it popping up multiple successive times when the clipboard is locked. We have also considered never showing the error dialog, but there was user feedback that this message is informative and helpful in some cases.

We hope this helps shed some light on this error message. For any design suggestions or new ideas on improving the Excel copy-paste experience, please post to Excel UserVoice.

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255 additional answers

Anonymous

2018-02-21T08:51:18+00:00

I have exactly the same. Just can't accept that microsoft cares about it's customers. I've had this for months and excel is my main working tool. Simplynot good enough!
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Anonymous

2018-02-21T05:57:26+00:00

If you have another workbook open, try switching to that and selecting a cell, then back to the first. I have the same issue from time to time but switching back and forth works though this most times. I noticed that sometimes Excel is actually selecting cells but the screen does not display this fact until I do the switch.

I have also set Excel to open a new session for every worksheet that I open though Explorer (double-clicking) or when opening from the Excel Icon on my taskbar. This allows me to know that I will only lose data in one session if something catastrophic happens and gives me a clean session to switch to when Excel seems to stop allowing selection.
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Anonymous

2018-02-21T00:17:03+00:00

I have the problem where I get the message can successfully paste but now can no longer select anything (eg cannot copy anymore) to fix I have to save close the workbook and reopen, slow painful exercise please advise on how to fix
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Anonymous

2018-02-13T15:09:32+00:00

I have found that I also lose the identification of the highlighted cell on occasion and I found that by switching to another open Excel worksheet that when I switch back the cell highlighting has returned.

I also found that quite often, due possibly to some of my VBA code, my Excel session can hang and ultimately crash when this happens so to prevent problems with other open spreadsheets I configured Excel to always open spreadsheets in a new session rather than the same one (unless I use the Excel File/Open dialog).
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