"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
    2017-12-21T21:55:57+00:00

    I'm not sure what you guys have improved. But here I am, with Windows 10 version 1709, Office 365 and Excel version 1711. It is 21 December 2017, this year is coming to its end and new year will soon begin. I am still having the same problem.

    I cannot work like this, this is horrible! I was thinking about reinstalling the whole thing all over again, but seeing that this is still an issue, then chances are that at least someone has already done so and it did not solve their problem, so I won't be reinstalling. I use my code editor a lot for large data set manipulations, and it works every single time. So I might as well just stick to the good old plain text until this is solved, because I cannot work like this, it is driving me mad, literally.

    Use this external link to see my animated GIF:

    https://imgur.com/QrB82pf.gif

    (When will we be able to post animated GIFs here?)

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  2. Anonymous
    2017-12-18T22:53:17+00:00

    I did purchase Office 365 and it is just as bad or worse of a problem. Although it says you can keep working, that is not true. Once the clipboard goes down, I have to save my file and reopen to continue working. This is very irritating and MS should be able to fix this problem.

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  3. Anonymous
    2017-12-18T22:36:25+00:00

    Me too.  Like you my issue occurs when ONLY Excel is open - and I'm dragging data from one cell to another.  Nothing else is open, not Word, nothing.  Not even another Excel file.

    Hopefully Microsoft is reading this - I'm using Office 2010 and Office 2016.  This only started showing up a month or so ago - never had this issue before.

    No, I'm not going to go out and purchase Office 365.  This old retired fart doesn't find that to be cost effective.  What I have works fine for me, well except for a slight bug.

    Being a royal pain is an understatement.  Let's hope MS can update WINDOWS 10 (this issue doesn't happen in Windows 7) to fix the clipboard.  Whatever was programmed in the last update didn't work  -- > notice the windows.old directory in there?  Must have been one heck of an update, with a bug in it.

    What cracks me up is the question underneath:  "Is the information helpful?"  Not only no, but .... no!

    I just stand by ready to press the enter key, alot.  :-)

    Best Regards,

    Chris

    Oh, I did disable live preview, no dice.

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  4. Anonymous
    2017-12-18T21:55:40+00:00

    This may be one of those features some like, but I find it to a be a pain.  

    I'm in Office 365 Excel, and the message appears often, even when just moving contents of one cell to another.

    I often do copy and paste between Word and Excel, so if there is a way to avoid this message, I'd sure like to know about it.

    Thanks,

    Dave O.

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