"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
    2018-05-11T17:36:19+00:00

    That is not the case.  I have Office 365 and I get the error about every third time I try to copy and paste. 

    I get the error and noise every time I do a copy/paste or a row. Along with just a cell.

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  2. Anonymous
    2018-05-11T15:46:11+00:00

    That is not the case.  I have Office 365 and I get the error about every third time I try to copy and paste.

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  3. Anonymous
    2018-04-21T18:02:33+00:00

    "it means that another app has a lock on the system clipboard." What in hades does this mean? How does another app get a "lock" on the clipboard? How can one find out what app it is and unlock it? Without this information, how is this answer at all helpful?

    This occurrs in no other program, ever, in all my experience. So it is extremely unlikely and hard to believe that "another app" is to blame for this behavior in Excell. Obviously there is something unique to Excell that makes this happen, and that needs to be fixed.

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  4. Anonymous
    2018-04-19T16:21:19+00:00

    Once this error pops up, excel inevitably freezes....

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