"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
    2017-12-23T19:05:41+00:00

    Same here. I have tried this "fix" several times and it does not help.

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  2. Anonymous
    2017-12-23T19:49:17+00:00

    im not sure what's wrong with my system, i didnt build it... go Dell...

    im getting this message multiple times on the same Excel spreadsheet. im not closing and reopening to get the message again, im in the same, continuously opened spreadsheet. i have to ctrl+c no less than 2 times to actually get the content to copy. paste works fine.

    this issue has been in play since this system was built, and as this is a company PC, i cant affect the updates or turn settings  on/off. i disabled Live Preview shortly after getting this system, but it's still broken. 

    why cant Microsoft take their time with program releases. throw it on a test platform and TEST IT before releasing broken crap. my entire office hates Office 365 and 95% of us hate Win10 which is what the company is moving to. Win7 and Office 2010 were a perfect combination, but MS doesnt want to support those any longer... madness. i get it- gotta put out new to make money, but cmon, test it to functionality first please and stop dropping crap from a plane.

    please dig into this issue and dont give us a work around, FIX IT. take time, designate a team to troubleshoot and correct, then publish the FIX to this issue, not a "try this..." bunk. if you insist on pushing junk, let us know, we will be happy to move to a Linux/Unix platform for stability and functionality. i prefer my Win7/Office 2010 at home, but that's at home... :(

    How many hundreds or even thousands of people are having the same problem but are not saying anything about it??

    Microsoft, why will you not fix this problem???

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  3. Anonymous
    2018-01-11T14:45:21+00:00

    This did not help at all.  I still receive multiple messages though I have recent Office and Windows.

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  4. Anonymous
    2018-01-31T17:30:48+00:00

    I had this issue with 2 new computers and a fresh install of Office 365.  The Live Preview fix mentioned did not fix the issue for us.

    It turned out that for me it seems to have been that the users did not have local administrative rights on their computers.  It is not common in our environment to provide users with local admin rights, but it appears that this might be something we need to do.

    I'm not sure if MS is storing clipboard memory in a common pool that is not available or is not consistently available when logged in as a user without these rights.  This may not be the reason everyone else are experiencing these issues, but for us, granting the rights and rebooting resolved the issue immediately.  At least if this is not the fix for you hopefully it leads you closer to your answer.

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