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

Anonymous

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.

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Anonymous

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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202 additional answers

Anonymous

2019-01-11T04:07:32+00:00

So how did you find out which app had "captured" clipboard?
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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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Anonymous

2019-01-11T02:31:37+00:00

For the love of Pete.. You all can stop "trying" nearly all the suggested solutions here.. **lol**

If you have this issue it is MOST LIKELY because you have ANOTHER APPLICATION that is also writing to the clipboard. This dumb error is because Microsoft in it's infinite wisdom sees fit to warn you that this is happening before each and every (or every other) copy and paste in Excel.

Why you may be wondering???

This is because Microsoft in it's infinite wisdom thinks it knows better then us how to manage our software configurations on our own devices and decided to not give any of us an option to turn this stupid warning off.

So your only other option is to disable the clipboard in whatever other application is writing to the clipboard and get your life back!!! (see image below) **lol**

In my case the software culprit was Beyond Compare's awesome clipboard compare feature. Unfortunately, I finally had to disable the clipboard comparison feature in Beyond Compare in order to bring peace and freaking quiet to my life with Excel.

That's my story.. But do keep trying all these other "fixes" that do not work and pulling out your hair.. **lol**
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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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