There's a problem with the clipboard, but you can still paste this content within this workbook.

Hi MrRogers83,

Thanks for posting the question on our forum.

According to your description, I suggest you try safe mode to identify an add-in or extension that may be causing a problem on startup.

Open Office apps in safe mode on a Windows PC

If the issue still exists, could you please provide the following information for further analysis?

1. The version of Office. (Click File>select Account)
2. Check if all files meet the issue.
3. When did the issue occur? Which operation have you taken before the issue occurred, such as updating OS version?

Regards,

Qing

Opening Excel in Safe mode did not resolve the issue. This happens with all spreadsheets opened in Excel, regardless of if they are saved on my hard drive or in Dropbox. To the best of my knowledge there were no system changes around when this issue started occurring. See attachment for product info.

I know we are focusing on my specific case, but this is also happening currently for my wife who is using a much older version of Windows 10 (1803) for her work with a different employer. The only known constants are that it's Excel in Office 365, and the issues started around the same time. 

Hi MrRogers83,

Thanks for sharing updates with us. It seems issue happen to all Excel file.

Apparently, this happens when some other program on the computer "locks up" the keyboard.

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.

A potential fix that has worked for some people is to follow these steps:

Open Excel >File>option>General>under User Interface Options un-check Enable Live Preview and see the result.

Meanwhile, here I found some UserVoice and we suggest you please vote on this particular UserVoice entry or  FIX There's a problem with the clipboard, but you can still paste your content within this workbook so that the related team can see that this is a highly requested for Excel users. This idea is also mentioned by many members. Microsoft uses the feedback to prioritize new feature programming. If the product developers have some updates about the feedback, they will post the updated information there directly.

Your understanding and patience will be highly appreciated.

Best Regards,

Waqas Muhammad

I am skeptical of this being the cause/solution. If this was really the cause, how has this never been an issue before? Why did multiple people I know suddenly start having the issue at the same time on different computers using different accounts? Why did our copy issues seemingly stop at the same time as well? 

I noticed today that I've not seen the pop up once, so I started checking around with people and they noticed as well that the issue has stopped basically over night.

I don't think this is the sort of issue that you can explain away with a very old forum post copy/paste. It's also clearly not system related since the people around me are experiencing it at the same time despite different versions of Windows on different computers. The constant is Office 365.

Like I said though, something changed and it's stopped at least for the time being. I'll check back in if it starts happening again.

Hi MrRogers83,

Thanks for sharing updates with us. I feel sorry for the inconvenience this had made. To dig into the problem. We understand Issues can be replicated on different computers in different time zones when using a clipboard to paste a content into another Excel sheet.

As you mention the pop-up error message stopped now. If issue again happen in your side you can post back any time here and we will follow up this case for you. 

Your understanding and patience will be highly appreciated.

Best Regards,

Waqas Muhammad