"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
    2017-06-05T18:17:52+00:00

    I was able to work around this issue by disabling the Live Preview.

    In Excel, go to File / Options / General and uncheck Enable Live Preview.

    Windows 7 Pro

    Excel 2016

    Best regards,

    John

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  2. Anonymous
    2017-06-04T07:13:28+00:00

    What I want to know is why Office insists on putting locks on absolutely everything -- files, the clipboard... It's not 1995 anymore. Can we do IPC correctly, please?

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  3. Anonymous
    2017-05-24T21:39:21+00:00

    Open Excel. Open a workbook. Try to copy/paste a cell and get this.

    "There's a problem with the clipboard, but you can still past your content withing this workbook."

    Green outline of box is gone.

    Will come back sometimes if I stay in workbook. Most of the time it will not come back.

    But most of the time I have to close/reopen workbook to get icon back.

    This has been going on now for over 6 months.

    I found a "clear clipboard" and have been using that. But that only lasts about 3 times of doing copy/paste.

    When is Microsoft going to fix this??

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  4. Anonymous
    2017-05-04T09:58:58+00:00

    Hi Mike, 

    can you please explain how do we go about fixing this error? do we need to re-install updates?

    Thanks

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