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I'm an encountering a weird problem with Excel, and it's especially annoying because it wasn't happening yesterday, and hasn't happened ever before. Here's an explanation of what I'm doing:

  1. I copy a cell from a spreadsheet
  2. I paste the contents into a browser
  3. A bit later, I copy something from the browser and attempt to paste it into the spreadsheet

But what happens is that when I attempt to paste the text into the spreadsheet, I just end up pasting the data from the cell that I copied in step 1. It seems that the Office clipboard "takes over" or something. If I clear the selection (using ESC) it just thinks I have nothing copied at all.

Even weirder, if I open the Office clipboard, I can see the URL that I copied from the browser on there, and if I click on it and choose "paste", it pastes the data from the cell I had copied instead. It's like it gives that cell (which is still highlighted with the "ant trail") total priority over everything else.

I'm not sure why this started happening or what I can do to fix it. Any help would be appreciated!

Here's a brief gif I made that shows what I'm talking about.

https://i.gyazo.com/c5f87e5dc231e38f0ef30879a68dd0fb.mp4

I copy the cell with "cats" and paste it into notepad, then copy "asdf" from notepad but when I paste into excel again, it just pastes "cats".

Edit #2: I just remembered that my computer updated and restarted itself overnight, so I'd bet it has something to do with that. Doesn't look like there was a MS Office update though.

Mike
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1 Answers1

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The "asdf" was never Copied to the Clipboard, Windows or otherwise. It was simply highlighted. Presumably Copied via a keyboard command as the mouse was not used for it. But it never made it to the Clipboard.

If I saw the GIF and in it the mouse right-clicked and chose "Copy" I'd see things differently. But that is not the case.

As to the "not Copied to the Clipboard" I have encountered times when I used Ctrl-C and then tried to paste to Excel, and to other programs, only to get the last thing I Copied before trying that copying. In those cases, I have never, in 30 years of using Windows, been able to get the keyboard copying to succeed. ONLY using the mouse breaks the impasse. After which, no problem, but without, no copying at all.

I believe that to be a mouse and Windows issue as it does not have to involve Excel. So I believe the same thing happened to the poster: he used the keyboard copying, but it did not occur, hence the "marching ants" never ceasing and accordingly getting the last thing Copied from Excel, not from Notepad.

As I believe it occurs in Windows and is a partial success of the process, but not the worthwhile portion at that, I see no problem with the partial success adding an entry to the Office Clipboard but failing before actually placing the desired material onto the Windows Clipboard, and therefore to the Office Clipboard: The process fails in between so you do not see the marching ants go away either, along with not replacing the contents with the new Copy.

Will be looking at that the next time I encounter this with Excel instead of another program.

Jeorje
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