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There’s a problem with the clipboard, but you can still paste this content within this workbook.
Excel and other Microsoft Office applications have their own clipboard function. Within Microsoft Office you can copy the formatting or paste it as plain text. Excel displays this message “There’s a problem with the clipboard, but you can still paste your content within this workbook” after you try to copy something because another program is using your clipboard. You can still copy and paste you can only copy to other programs, but no Microsoft Office programs.
There is no complete solution to this problem unless you can find out which program kidnapped your clipboard. I did find a workaround to turn off the notification in Excel.
Workaround
For the techies among us.
- Start Excel.
- Go to File in the upper-left corner.
- Click Options.
- Go to General.
- Under User Interface Options un-check Enable Live Preview.
You shouldn’t be getting the message now.
With screenshots for the dummies among us.
Click on Start and search for Excel.
Go to File in the upper-left corner.
Open Options at the bottom of the menu.
Find Enable Live Preview under User Interface Options and uncheck it.
If you do have a real solution , please let me know this in the comments and I’ll update the blog post.
“Which program kidnapped your clipboard??!!” Until now the clipboard was shared. This is Windows. Two std features of the OS have been the ability to have multiple windows/programs open at once, all or almost all with some measure of cut and paste capability, and the simple mechanics of cutting and pasting which have been around since the very beginning. This is such a problem because by now, everyone ctrl+x, ctrl+c, and ctrl+v’s reflexively. Leave it to MS to f with something so ingrained in the user experience.
And to echo Karen and Peter Clark, I don’t give a crap about the error message – it’s that the program locks and must be restarted every time you perform an action that is, again, second nature.
worked for me
Unchecking “Enable Live Preview” fix this problem for me
For me, the application interfering with the clipboard was HashMyFiles, which is a utility for computing file checksums. The way I narrowed it down was by using Process Explorer. (you could also use task manager, but the former gives you a lot more info) Close out any work that you care about, and start carefully killing one process at a time, going back to your Excel sheet and hitting Ctrl+C a few times in between each task. When the dialog stops appearing, you’ve found the problem. Modal dialogs are so 1999, and it’s such a crude, half-job remedy. It’s like MS just slapped a band-aid on it and called it done. After years and years of this you’d think they’d come up with something a little more elegant. (Like a checkbox, at least, that says, “Do not show this dialog again.”)
This fix is all very well for papering over the crack, but what I find is that if I do not immediately save, close and re-open there is the danger that all the cut and paste changes I have made since the last open are undone – with the lying error message being shown each time. Even intermediate saves do not help.
This worked for me. Additionally, after getting the clipboard error, the pointer would disappear which made knowing its location in the table next to impossible. That’s fixed too now! Thank you so much!!!
My problem is not the comment it’s the fact once I complete the paste it freezes the spreadsheet and I cannot do anything further such as click into another cell without saving the spreadsheet, closing it down and then opening it again. I have to copy and paste a lot and it’s impossible to save, close and open after each copy and paste.
For me the the kidnapper of clipboard was Beyond Compare’s Clipboard Compare.
it didnt worked for me. pls sugest someother solution
Looks like the response is faster and so far solved the issue. The problem with this is that once this happened, any worksheet trigger event in my VBA will stop from functioning. I need to close not only working workbook but all Excel application and re-open the workbook to get trigger event to work again. However, the issue will not stop macro from running.
The message keeps popping up even after the change. It doesn’t work for me.
I wish I had NEVER been forced into using the POS Office 365.
Hi, thank you for your post. But this wasn’t a solution. The message occurs even after the changes you mentioned
Thank you so much!!! It really helps me!!!!
This fix may get rid of that annoying message, which I get all the time in Excel, but I like Live Preview, and use it a lot. So for me, it is not something I want to do.
This is a problem unique to Excel, no other Office product. To me, that means Microsoft should fix it. We shouldn’t have to find hacks to get around it.
Thanks for this!
This worked as a workaround for one of our users.