"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
    2017-02-17T16:31:36+00:00

    Hello,

    I have responded on a different thread: https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/msoffice/forum/msoffice\_excel-mso\_win10/clipboard-problem-in-excel-2016/224b2a59-8a0c-4897-baba-a481dd06e085

    Here is some info we have gathered. Engineering is investigating the issue.

    I have another update on this error: “There's a problem with the clipboard, but you can still paste your content within this workbook."

    Excel engineering can repro the problem and I was able to repro it myself. What is happening, is that some other app has a lock on the clipboard. Excel doesn't need the clipboard when doing a copy/paste inside Excel but it does need the clipboard if you paste outside of Excel, and the clipboard is unavailable. What you see if that if another app has a lock on the clipboard, you get the above alert and then the paste occurs inside Excel. If you try to paste outside of Excel, such as into Word or WordPad, nothing happens...nothing gets pasted.

    The same thing happens in Word and WordPad when another app has a lock on the clipboard, except that they don't raise the alert - they just silently fail - i.e. nothing happens when you paste.

    The alert is an attempt to tell the user that pasting within Excel will work, but pasting outside of Excel won't work. Last July, we made some changes to the alert. It used to say "We couldn't free up space on the Clipboard.  Another program might be using it right now." In July, we changed the message to “There's a problem with the clipboard, but you can still paste your content within this workbook." and it was changed to only come up once per Excel instance.

    One option is to silently fail like Word, PPT, WordPad, etc. I welcome your thoughts on silently failing. I will pass them on to the Excel engineering team.

    Thanks,

    -Mike

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  2. Anonymous
    2016-12-26T23:35:03+00:00

    Actually, I solved this problem some time ago by using the Office Repair utility.  Thanks.

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  3. Anonymous
    2016-12-26T22:36:52+00:00

    It does appear to possibly be an add-in issue.  I would look in the (well buried) add-ins list (go to File / Options / Add-ins and then select "COM Add-ins" from the bottom list and click Go.  Disable any that you don't know you need.  Do the same for Excel Add-ins.  Exit and restart Excel and see if the problem isn't gone (it was for me; it was apparently "Visual Studio Tools for Office - Design Time Adaptor for Excel" that was at least in some way contributing to this behavior because disabling that baby fixed it.  I don't plan on doing a lot of VS design in Excel, so nothing lost.

    YMMV.

    Good luck.

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  4. Anonymous
    2016-12-23T16:12:31+00:00

    Hello Maria Fab,

    I have tried all of the suggested fixes for this problem and nothing has worked.  I ran the repair, ran excel in safe mode, ran OffCAT (it did pickup that excel needed to be updated, that was done, no improvement) in every conceivable way.  I still get the error message when I copy and paste in a spreadsheet.  Cut and paste is no problem.  This is making my use of excel a nightmare, the consistent chime and error popup stops my workflow repeatedly.

    Not sure what to do next.

    I can try to reinstall everything I guess but I think this was effectively done in the repair process.

    Pedro

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