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

Anonymous
2020-04-08T18:30:07+00:00

I am using the Microsoft Office 365 Business desktop app, and as of this posting am running Windows 10 version 1903 (OS Build 18362.720) on this particular laptop. This problem has been witnessed across multiple computers, Windows 10 versions, Microsoft accounts, all while using the Office 365 app.

I track a lot of data in Excel and often copy cells from it and paste them into online forms, ETC. Within the last few weeks I have started getting a pop up when I try to copy a cell that says "There's a problem with the clipboard, but you can still paste this content within this workbook."

It does not seem to matter if the file is stored locally or not.

I have found that if I continue to press Ctrl+v 2 to 4 more times it usually at some point copies the data as it should, without the pop up, and allows me to paste it wherever I want.

I searched for an answer to what is going on and or if there is a solution, and found that people have been periodically having this problem for years, and but could not find a solution that worked despite a post on this site having over 20 pages of replies and over 1500 reports of having the same problem, before comments were locked due to the thread age.

I have tried repairing the app without success. I have tried updating Office, which did do an update but did not solve the problem. I've restarted the computer and Excel many times.

This is making use of Excel inefficient and annoying. I'm guessing it's only a matter of time before I and others I've spoken with that are experiencing the same thing, are not able to paste outside of the workbook at all. As is, I may as well just type everything again instead of bothering with the broken copy/paste feature.

Microsoft 365 and Office | Excel | For home | Windows

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  1. Anonymous
    2022-08-10T09:56:30+00:00

    I already have this turned off. Perhaps it helps but it doesn't solve everything.

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  2. Anonymous
    2021-12-29T14:54:04+00:00

    This is completely insane. I've been having this problem for years. I just did a full fresh reinstall of Win10, hoping it might help... but nope, a few days later this and the rest of Excel's insane bugs and weirdness with the clipboard are back again.

    How is it that my clipboard is perfect in every other program, all sorts of trivial little things that most people have never heard, from all sorts of developers at all skill levels, on every OS... Yet a huge company like MS can allow this to go on for so many years, on one of the mostly widely used pieces of business software in the world, on their own OS.

    Even dragging rows to move them gives me these garbage clipboard warning modals... what does that even have to do with the clipboard to begin with?

    If MS had the resources to create the web + mobile versions of Excel, can't they at least fix some of the garbage code that's been plaguing the desktop version for so many years?

    Not always, but most of the time the modal warning is false for me. i.e. The clipboard DOES actually work. So I'm just having to repeatedly dismiss this stupid modal that's lying to me about a problem that doesn't exist. People have requested in the past to at least give us an OPTIONAL setting to disable the modal, and of course we get the usual simplistic reply about it as if anyone was asking for it to be the default. Nobody asked for that. If you aren't going to fix the problem, at least just give us a registry setting we can change to get rid of the false modals constantly interrupting complicated work we're trying to get done.

    I just have to give up on Excel. The only "solution" is to just go back to Google Sheets + LibreOffice Calc. I've wasted enough of my life trying to solve these issues and waiting for fixes. Enough is enough. Excel is unusable.

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  3. Anonymous
    2021-07-21T21:08:33+00:00

    Right.

    The Excel "drag and drop" function is when I see the " There's a problem with the Clipboard" warning.

    I can "copy and past " with no error message.

    So the problem is not with the "copy and past" function , as the error message suggests,.

    Instead , the problem is with the "drag and drop " action.

    "Drag and drop" should not be using the Clipboard .

    Maybe we are asking the wrong question...the right question may be ..

    "Why is the Excel drag and drop function using the Clipboard ?

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  4. Anonymous
    2020-12-22T18:09:42+00:00

    I can copy/paste, but if I select a cell and drag it to another location I get the same error message.

    No Linkedin ever enabled, disabled live preview, I will try disabling any COM add-ins

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  5. Anonymous
    2020-12-01T02:45:05+00:00

    Thanks - I just unchecked the Linkdin Features and it stopped immediately - been driving me insane and no sensible answer from Microsoft. Wonderful!!

    This problem seems to apply to multiple versions of Microsoft Windows and Microsoft Office.  I am running Office 2016 on Windows 10.  I have not had LinkedIn Features ever turned on, and stopped using LinkedIn several years before buying this laptop.  I get this problem, with no fix apparently on the Microsoft radar.

    CML  2020-11-30

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