"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
    2018-08-24T17:24:40+00:00

    I have yet to come to this forum and find a solution to my problem, and I'm talking about years, not days, weeks or months.  It's unbelievable that problems that annoy the hell out of people are allowed to persist.  This product gets worse and worse with every "upgrade".

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  2. Anonymous
    2018-08-12T07:04:47+00:00

    I have been suffering from this issue for 2 weeks now and I can't work like this. When will Microsoft fix this issue? :)

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  3. Anonymous
    2018-08-11T13:24:38+00:00

    i disagree with Mike Maxey on this. I am using Excel currently (office 365) and i got this message 6 times back to back while trying to use Format Painter on the same page, from one line to the next. i am also not using any other program that is locking clipboard that i am aware of. i have Outlook open for my emails, but am not currently copying anything from that. 

    additionally, why is clipblard locking to anything? as a default, it should pull the requested data to the clipboard each time you give the command to. that may be something Microsoft would want to look in to. 

    this alert is simply maddening.

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  4. Anonymous
    2018-08-07T19:00:22+00:00

    Any updates on this- because I still get this constantly.   I have open up to 5 spreadsheets at a time and receive this message constantly.

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