"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
    2019-01-11T04:03:52+00:00

    This fix makes no difference to my Excel.

    And it happens every time - so with 5000 rows of data to edit I've just given up :-(

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  2. Anonymous
    2019-01-11T00:33:28+00:00

    I noticed too that my Enable Live Preview checkbox doesn't even work at all. I can uncheck it and not only does that not help the problem, i still get live previews when i hover over an icon or button.

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  3. Anonymous
    2019-01-10T19:30:23+00:00

    I get the same error multiple times when cut and pasting data from one cell to another in the Office 365 version of Excel on Windows 10.   The odd thing is I might get the error two or three times in a row, then it stops, then I get the error again.   It is not consistent, and I am not opening or closing other applications during my session when the error happens, then stops, then happens again.

    The "fix" of disabling Live Preview does not work for me.   Besides, I like Live Preview, and use it a lot. 

    I ran the "Repair" utility; still get the error.

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  4. Anonymous
    2019-01-10T18:13:12+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.

    I get the same error message multiple times when trying to copy and past in the same Excel spreadsheet.  Is there a way to disable the message?

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