Clipboard problem in Excel 2016

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.

Hello Mike;

We are still experienced the same issue. We couldn't paste within excel too. After installing service pack, Still this issue persists. Can we have any better solution on this issue?

Hi Mike,

why is this still marked as answer???

It is

1. no solution of the people's problem
2. it is wrong regarding the explanation
3. not helpful

see my comments from March 3, 2017.

By the way: nobody took notice of the problem at the UserVoice.

Is it really that hard? What is Microsoft paying their engineers for? Why are other programs allowed to use Microsoft Excel clipboard????? Is it that hard to restrict other programs from using Excel clipboard while user is working in it? I hope that there are consumers associations in USA which protect consumers right. Microsoft should be sued and fined for this. They are selling buggy software and their engineers are incompetent of solving bugs. Microsoft is making fun of their customers.

Hello!

I have to concur with this.... I have been running VirtualBox on my computer, and when I close out I no longer have the issue.

So it's obvious that another program was hijacking the clipboard functionality, but I certainly assume not everybody in this thread is specifically running VirtualBox (as I have the bi-directional clipboard function turned on).

The only thought that comes to mind for other users, is to run Excel only without other apps running (to verify the clipboard error message goes away), and to open up other apps you normally use one at a time alongside Excel. It's possible you might find the app that is conflicting with the clipboard. At least you would know who the culprit is.

Ensure you're not running apps in the system tray that could access the clipboard, like Screenshot type apps for instance.

Hello Freya,

I can confirm that I am also seeing this new pop-up message "There's a problem with the clipboard, but you can...". I see it only in Excel 2016. I am running Windows 10 1607 14393.447, Excel 2016 (Office 2016 version 1610 build 7466.2038) on a recent clean install of Windows 10 and Office 2016 with not much 3rd party software. In my case, roughly 1 out of 4 CTRL+Cs results in this message. However, I do not get it just once - I get it repeatedly. Rapid CTRL+Cs seem to provoke it especially.

As others have suggested, on my system, I have traced it down to another application intercepting the clipboard - in my case, it was VirtualBox. Shutting down all VirtualBox VMs immediately fixes the problem in Excel, but having one or more VMs running, even if the host-guest clipboard integration feature is disabled in that VM, causes the problems in Excel.

I will raise this with VirtualBox. However, anecdotally, many applications that hook in to the clipboard (eg. Skype click to call integration and others) seem to upset Excel specifically (and not just version 2016). This is not just an Excel issue, but it seems from Freya's comments that the Excel team is aware of it, and trying to mitigate it somewhat. If this message could genuinely come up once per session, or be optionally dismissed permanently, that would be preferable.