Clipboard problem in Excel 2016

Anonymous
2016-04-16T23:39:19+00:00

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.

Microsoft 365 and Office | Excel | For home | Windows

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Anonymous
2017-02-28T16:18:02+00:00

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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  1. 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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  2. Anonymous
    2018-02-13T14:57:13+00:00

    I get the "There is a problem with the clipboard" message when using Excel and after the dialog box clears I am able to paste. But then I can't see what cell I am highlighting and I can't clear the dashed line that is highlighting the cell(s) that I last copied. And if I try to close the spreadsheet it locks my system up.

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  3. Anonymous
    2018-02-05T01:12:02+00:00

    Here, here! This appears to be a common problem that, although annoying, Microsoft is not addressing. Perhaps the message could also say 'Clear your clipboard to solve this problem' or 'Would you like XL to clear previous clip board save or . . .  it used to put extra clipboard saves in the left margin from which you could choose. Perhaps this has been user disabled and the cause of the problem.

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  4. Anonymous
    2018-01-29T22:11:28+00:00

    >Last year we made some improvements to Office365 users so that this error message only shows once per Excel instance.

    This is false. The dialog still pops up on EVERY drag-and-drop operations on cells in Office 365. (Ctrl+C/Ctrl+V was fixed, it seems)

    >However you cannot paste to another app like Word or Outlook which uses the clipboard.

    This is false. I can still copy/paste into other applications as usual.

    Steps to reproduce: run Office 365 and RealVNC viewer version 5.x with clipboard support.

    Please fix this - and better yet, add a checkmark "Never show this message again" on the popup for the 99.99% of the users who only see it as a problem.

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