"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
    2017-11-20T15:24:40+00:00

    Thanks, Dominic, for your reply.  As I have learned from past gliches, they sometimes fix themselves, and this has happened to me, for which I am grateful!  This is a command I use quite frequently, and I use Excel quite frequently.  I really didn't want to take the extra step each time to get rid of the pop-up window.  I hope it stays fixed, because I never found any fixes that worked for me to implement on my own.

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  2. Anonymous
    2017-11-20T16:33:28+00:00

    Is there a way to turn off the notification that there is a problem with the paste. 

    I encounter this all the time in excel and it is totally annoying and it's a worthless message.  

    It really needs to be fixed by Microsoft to allow the paste. 

    I think they are just ducking the problem rather than getting in and solving it... 

    JP

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  3. Anonymous
    2017-11-20T17:18:09+00:00

    The bug can be caused by a 3rd party software which monitors the clipboard.

    In my case, it was Beyondcompare's 'Clipboard compare' option. Turning this off fixed the problem for me.

    This of course is only a workaround and Microsoft still needs to fix the bug in the first place!

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  4. Anonymous
    2017-11-21T15:35:07+00:00

    This is a ridiculous "feature." If it disables major functionality, get rid of it. And copy and paste is the most major functionality there is.

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