"there's a problem with the clipboard, but you can still paste this content within this workbook"

Anonymous
2016-11-17T14:55:36+00:00

Perhaps someone could direct to a discussion where this has been tackled, but I keep getting this error "there's a problem with the clipboard, but you can still past this content within this workbook " with simple cut/copy and paste actions in Excel.  The error box pops up and an alert sounds (which is super annoying) after every paste.  I can still perform the actions however my selection is not highlighted and I can't be sure that I have selected the correct information until I do a paste in the same, or another, worksheet. I have Excel 2016 in Office 365 on a machine running Windows 10.

Microsoft 365 and Office | Excel | For home | Windows

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Anonymous
2017-02-28T16:18:43+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
    2018-04-17T15:20:40+00:00

    I've been keeping an eye on this post and it sounds like MS needs to spend a bit more time on it.  Perhaps giving excel priority on locking the clipboard.

    I'm not sure how another program could "lock" the clipboard when I've been exclusively in Excel for the last hour - copying and pasting and having a merry time.  Then from nowhere - I lose the ability to highlight cells, etc.  and get the error message. 

    I appreciate MS cutting down on the number of times the error message shows up but shouldn't they be addressing the core issue rather than kill the "error messenger"?

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  2. Anonymous
    2018-04-13T17:51:09+00:00

    I have the same Office 365/Windows 10 and found that unchecking "Enable Live Preview" as suggested by others, reduced the problem by about 90% for me.

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  3. Anonymous
    2018-04-13T07:42:52+00:00

    It is April 2018 and I am still getting the "there is a problem with the Clipboard but you can still paste in excel .." almost every time I copy in Excel. I am an Office 365 user (Windows 10), so whatever you did to fix this for Office 365 in 2017 it didn't work for me. What can I do to get rid of these annoying messages?

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  4. Anonymous
    2018-04-12T12:34:01+00:00

    It is finally time for everyone on this thread to realize something. This is an organization that does not know how to design a window manager that supports "focus follows mouse". Whether or not Microsoft is aware of this problem or not, and they most certainly are, it should be painfully clear by now that they simply do not care.

    I agree. I wonder how many people are fighting this each and every day? To get our work done, we just let the error come up and keep going.

    Thank you Microsoft for fixing the problem. Oh, wait a minute, Microsoft has NOT fixed the problem.

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