"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
    2018-06-12T16:29:25+00:00

    Hi,

    I continue to get this message. Not just "once per excel instance".

    and I can easily paste to outlook, so not really sure what the deal is here.

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  2. Anonymous
    2018-06-02T21:27:58+00:00

    It's June 2, 2018 and I am having this problem Office 365 and a brand new i7 with Windows 10.  It occurs each time I need to paste. So issue is not resolved.

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  3. Anonymous
    2018-05-12T14:17:26+00:00

    yeah i don't know what improvement you made but I get that error message every. single. time. I copy and paste so clearly that failed.

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  4. Anonymous
    2018-05-11T18:26:37+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.

    To add to the conversation, I also have had all the symptoms with ONLY Excel from the first used my new Office 365 platform. Although, after trying the mitigation noted below

    John_8675309 replied on

    I only have it at only the first time I start Excel for the day. I also agree that this is an obvious either a problem with Excel or possibly Windows 10 because I have tried starting Excel immediately after booting in the morning and I still get the same message. Lastly, I have four PCs all running the same version of Windows 10. Three of them are also running Office 365 and they all get the same error. The last one, which is generally used by my wife, is still running a full Office 2010 Pro version and does not get this error at all.

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