VBA editor auto-deletes spaces at the ends of lines - excel

Is there a way to convince the VBA editor in Excel to stop auto-formatting lines to remove the space at the end when I pause in my typing for a quarter second?

I had this exact problem and the following worked for me.
Click the Microsoft Office Button, and then click Excel Options
Click the Add-Ins category
In the Manage box, click COM Add-ins, and then click Go.
Look for an add in called 'Load Test Report AddIn' then uncheck it
restart excel
This addin is installed with VS2010 Beta2

In Excel 2010, toggling Design Mode button on the Developer Ribbon Tab solves the problem for me.

I've definitely had that issue before, where the vba editor would format as I was typing (not just when I went to another line). For me, it seemed to be related to a Microsoft Web Browser control that I had in an open workbook. When I took out the web browser, the VBA editor started acting normally again. I have no idea why that worked, but it did. Now I avoid using that control in my workbooks.

Something is causing your spreadsheet to recalculate while you are in the VBA Editor and this 'compiles' your code and thus strips the spaces. You need to stop the cells recalculating while you are editing. Turning the calculation to manual in the spreadsheet.
Tools > Options > Calculation should do the trick.
I noticed this when I had cells recalculating thanks to a DDE connection.

There is sort of a way to turn off the auto-"correction" in the VBA Editor.
Tools Menu -> Options -> Editor Tab -> Clear the Auto Syntax Check box
Sadly, this won't solve all your problems, as the VBA Editor tends to have a mind of its own, for better or worse.

Taking it out of design mode fixes it every-time on vba2003 - its was driving me crazy at first ... i did notice it might have something to do with the web control but when i take it out of design mode it works fine ... just toggle that to get it to behave :)

I have had this same problem several times recently, and has driven me crazy.
After reading this post all the different fix-ups mentioned (none worked for me), I recalled I have been playing lately with Internet Explorer Control, opening Internet Explorer from VBA.
This is mentioned in some of the answers in this post.
This got me in the right path and, in order to fix it, I had to first delete all iexplore.exe instances (alt+control+delete), closed Excel and open excel again.
(iexplore.exe had been opened invisible from the VBA code, and I didn't know they were running)
That fixed the bug.
I have been programming quite heavily with VBA for over 4 years, and never had this problem.
Just a couple of weeks ago I started using IE control, and I started getting this problem...so in my case I can only assume the bug is directly related to the IE control.
I am running both excel 2003 and 2007 in same PC at the same time, and the problem only happens with excel 2007.

None of the above for me.
I had a Application.OnTime timer that fired every second and this triggered a recalculation of something: commenting it made my day.

This has started happening to me recently after adding a Timer event to an Access 2007 form. The VB editor "finalizes" the current line (as if you had moved the cursor off of the statement; I have auto syntax checking off) each time the event fires (initially I had it set to 1 second, now it is set to 5 seconds, and the behavior scales accordingly). In order for the event code to execute, the application has to ensure that it has been compiled. Presumably, the editor needs to be in a "sane" state to do this, as it probably has to check for code dependencies among modules. Note that the behavior occurs regardless of whether any dependent code is actually loaded into the editor at the time. Note also that resetting the execution state doesn't affect the timer event firing. As a practical matter, one could close the triggering form, switch it to design view, set a breakpoint in the triggered code, or increase the timer interval while working with the editor.
In contrast to abhishek's comment, changing the settings of Tools/Options.../General/Compile On Demand and/or Background Compile did not affect the issue.

If it helps, none of the previous answers solved mine. Only solution appeared to be to close the xls file and reopen it. Frustrating to have to do every 30 mins but at least it works. Would love to know why it's recompiling and cleaning the text... should really be an option to disable the text cleanup but couldn't find it.

Turn off Tools > Options > General > Background Compile. This solved it for me.

This is a long standing problem that could have various causes. I had this same issue occur in the Access VBE (so naturally the Excel answers weren't relevant). After a LOT of digging I finally got it fixed with the solution below. First a recap though:
If you are here because of this issue in Excel, try the solutions above first. To summarize:
The most common issue in Excel is that the Design button is toggled. Toggle that and see if the behavior changes as submitted by Dmitry Frenkel above
If that doesn't work, check for the "Load Test Report" AddIn as mentioned by Ade.
Those are really the two main causes in Excel, but if neither of those solutions work, then scroll through the rest of the solutions here. All are valid possibilities for the cause. In Access the cause is pretty straight forward. It's a timer issue on a form somewhere. I found this solution from here by User Kevin K. Sullivan.
Copy the following line of code onto the clipboard. (You might need to
paste it into a text editor first and coerce it onto one line, depending on
your newsreader. It must be one line.)
For i = 0 to Forms.Count -1: Debug.Print Forms(i).Name, Forms(i).TimerInterval: Next i
Switch to Access.
Press Ctrl-G to go to the Immediate Window.
Press Ctrl-V to paste in the code.
Press enter to to run the code. All open forms will be listed. Any non-zero timer intervals are your culprits. Simply close that form (It may be invisibly open from another process than the one you thought you were dealing with).
I think the solution for Access here is what the user Dom was trying to say above. I guess the down votes were because it wasn't explained very well and/or because he was speaking of Access when the OG issue was in Excel. Regardless, he is likely on point if you are here because of the VBE in Access.
I hope this helps people. I know I kept finding this page when researching this issue, so that's why I thought I'd update this solution here.

I hit this problem today on a fresh install of Excel 2010 Beta 2. None of the above made any difference, but going into the trust center and disabling all application add-ins fixed the problem for me.

I have Office 2010 Pro and I had the same issue. As I type the space between each word was being deleted. After trying each of the options turning them on and off the only way I found working was to disable the Winzip Courie(excel) add-in. This is done thru the Options dialog box Add-Ins section.

In office 365 I had the same issue - what worked for me is I saved the file with a different name and when I re-opened the new file the problem went away.

I found this issue pops up when I had AutoSave on. Turning that off let me code without it compiling every second.

I don't think I've ever seen the VBE remove a space when I've stopped typing. It will remove trailling spaces from lines if you move to another line, but that's something different and not behaviour that I think can be altered.

The removal of spaces in the VBA editor for Access occurs when a form is open in Form("Execute") mode. This is probably due to background executions based on "On Timer" methods. Close the form in Access solves the problem in VBA.

Related

VBA editor in any Office 365 app not opening anymore

I am using VBA in most of my office 365 applications for many years now. Last week an error appeared that I can't fix anymore, without having to create a new profile in windows (according to Microsoft helpdesk). Besides that this is quiet a lot of work that I would like to avoid, if this is the only solution, I like to know what happened and why, to prevent future errors.
Problem: in any office 365 application, when opening the vba editor, in the taskbar, a window appears that I cannot open and that looks like a corrupted editor window. Hence I cannot edit my code anymore. The code is runnable though from the developers-macros-run-menu.
Cause: I ran a code from ms-word, that saves the pages from a merged document into separte files, .docx and .pdf. The code was running fine, but after a little editing started to quit before the last page was reached and after some time trying over, I couldn't open the editor anymore. I am not sure if this error is caused by the code, or something else.
Unfortunately I cannot display the code here, because I can't open it anymore.
I updated Office 365 to the last version, without any result.
Creating a new Windows-account solves the problem, but implies that I have to reinstall many apps and services.
Does anyone have had the same experience, what is the problem and/ or what can I do to restore this error other than the new-account solution?
The VBA Editor window moved off screen. This might have been caused by accidentally pressing WINDOWS KEY + SHIFT + ARROW (not likely), or by a problem in windows 10.
For a solution see https://superuser.com/q/53585
I'd the same problem.
That´s just a question of hidden windows. Just press shift and left click on top of the code window in the task bar. Then select maximze and your window will appear.
Hope it helps.
Joao

Can't enter break mode at this time

This has been happening increasingly, when I have a sheets.add or sheets.delete in excel VBA. After searching and searching I finally found the official Microsoft support page on it. My question is, does anyone know why I could have stepped through this code just fine over and over, and then all of a sudden it starts doing what Microsoft says it would always do, and is there a way to fix it?
Sub foo()
Sheets.add
debug.print "sheet added" 'breakpoint here
End sub
It's as simple as that. You won't be able to recreate it, because the issue I'm asking about is the fact that it doesn't happen at first. It works just fine over and over then randomly presents the error described in the linked Microsoft support page.
Check if Microsoft Visual Basic for Applications Extensibility is being referenced in the project.
You can check that in the Tools/References Menu on the Visual Basic window of the project.
Referencing Visual Basic for Applications Extensibility prevents the program having its execution suspended:
Excel helps says specifically:
A change was made programmatically to the project using the extensibility (add-in) object model. This prevents the program from having execution suspended. You can continue running, or end execution, but can't suspend execution.
You are unable to step through code when making changes to the project (dynamically eg using InsertLine etc). the code can be run but not stepped through.
Deleting certain objects including ActiveX objects actually changes the VB project. It took me some time to realize that the following line of code prevented the VBE from entering break mode:
Excel.ActiveSheet.DrawingObjects.Delete
If you can identify the code causing the issue, and the order of operations isn't important, move it to the end of your script.
Here are a few suggestions which are not fool-proof,
Firstly, verify that the error does not occur if a breakpoint is not set.
If it doesn't, try a few other things:
From the VBE Debug menu, "Compile VBA Project", it's worth a shot.
Delete the line entirely. Run the code. Then put the line back in and try again with the breakpoint.
Add a DoEvents statement after the Sheets.Add
Use a MsgBox instead of a breakpoint on a Debug.Print. With the message box displayed, attempt to manually break using ctrl+fn+End. (At this point, "breaking" isn't necessary but it would be interesting to see whether you can break this way)
Put a breakpoint on Sheets.Add instead; practically speaking, there's no reason to put the breakpoint on a Print statement if you can just put it on the preceding line.
Are there any Addins? If so, disable all of them and re-enable one at a time, testing to see which one may contribute to the error.
Yet another Excel/VBA glitch.
When it happens to me when I click a button running a macro:
I first try to directly run the macro from VBE,
if it fails, then I put a breakpoint at the first instruction of the macro,
if it still fails, I try both,
or, after clicking the button and breaking on the first breakpoint, I do a single step (SHIFT F8) and then I can let debug run freely as usual (F5).
And so far I don't get this error anymore.
Probably not foolproof either but worth a try.
Ran into the same issue, and (as far as I can tell) the only relevant answer here is Answer 5 (i.e. the one provided by Chrisb).
I've been working with vba for (too many) years now, and never encountered this until I had a project that needed vba to delete ActiveX controls. In my case, the 'ActiveX controls' were a spurious result of data copied in from a web page.
Additionally, there appears to be a way around the issue. Using the following code (versus, e.g. deleting the ActiveX as a shape), seems to circumvent the issue:
On Error Resume Next
ActiveSheet.OLEObjects.Visible = True
ActiveSheet.OLEObjects.Delete
On Error GoTo 0
I say 'appears' and 'seems' above as implementing the above solved the issue for me. However, before I implemented same, I had made other code changes and I have not yet fully regression tested for all possible other reasons the problem was resolved. :)
This has happened to me multiple times and this solution works for me.
Run a different macro within the same VBA project.
Then go back and run the same macro that is causing the pop-up message to appear. The message should no longer appear.

How to disable auto backspace in Excel VBA editor

When typing in the editor it puts me back on the end of the last word.
For example, I want Sub Entername()
If I'm not typing quickly enough it goes: SubEnterName().
How do I turn this off.
I've heard of this problem before. Try these steps:
Close down excel.
Open it first it in safe mode (type "excel.exe /s" in the run box).
Open the VBA Editor and attempt to write a macro. The issue should not occur
Close down excel and re open it normally
I've heard these steps have fixed this issue before for others.
Are you using any VBE addins like Smart Indenter or Code Cleaner? Remove Code Cleaner and install it only when you are going to use it, then uninstall it when you are done. I had the same problem and Code Cleaner was the culprit. I believe it might be the two of them together that causes it.
For reference:
VBA Code Cleaner
Smart Indenter
This issue is because of a COM Add-In called 'Load Test Report Addin'. to disable it, do the following:
go to Excel Options -> Add-Ins and choose Excel COM Add-ins from bottom drop down and press Go... button. then uncheck the 'Load Test Report Addin' item to diable it. this will clear the problem!
To prevent auto refreshing and deleting back-spaces in VBA editor, you should make sure that all forms or reports that have On-Timer Event Procedures are in design view or the code should be turned-off (i.e. converted into comments).
However, it is better to make sure that all forms and reports are in design view which means none of the On-Timer codes are executing.
I hope this helps.
Shafiu.
Do you have AutoSave turned on? I had a file doing this just now. While typing, as SOON as I stopped, AutoSave was working away - (inadvertently, I'm sure) this was causing VBE to kill spaces.
Did two tests:
-Moved the file off Sharepoint onto my local machine, worked fine
-Turned off AutoSave on the Sharepoint copy, worked fine

Excel VBA App stops spontaneously with message "Code execution has been halted"

From what I can see on the web, this is a fairly common complaint, but answers seem to be rarer. The problem is this:
We have a number of Excel VBA apps which work perfectly on a number of users' machines. However on one machine they stop on certain lines of code. It is always the same lines, but those lines seem to have nothing in common with one another.
If you press F5 (run) after the halt, the app continues, so it's almost like a break point has been added. We've tried selecting 'remove all breaks' from the menu and even adding a break and removing it again.
We've had this issue with single apps before and we've 'bodged' it by cutting code out of modules, compiling and then pasting it back in etc.
The problem now seems to relate to Excel itself rather than a single .xls, so we're a little unsure how to manage this.
Any help would be gratefully received :)
Thanks,
Philip Whittington
I have found a 2nd solution.
Press "Debug" button in the popup.
Press Ctrl+Pause|Break twice.
Hit the play button to continue.
Save the file after completion.
One solution is here:
The solution for this problem is to add the line of code
“Application.EnableCancelKey = xlDisabled” in the first line of your
macro.. This will fix the problem and you will be able to execute the macro
successfully without getting the error message “Code execution has been interrupted”.
But, after I inserted this line of code, I was not able to use Ctrl+Break any more. So it works but not greatly.
This problem comes from a strange quirk within Office/Windows.
After developing the same piece of VBA code and running it hundreds of times (literally) over the last couple days I ran into this problem just now. The only thing that has been different is that just prior to experiencing this perplexing problem I accidentally ended the execution of the VBA code with an unorthodox method.
I cleaned out all temp files, rebooted, etc... When I ran the code again after all of this I still got the issue - before I entered the first loop. It makes sense that "press "Debug" button in the popup, then press twice [Ctrl+Break] and after this can continue without stops" because something in the combination of Office/Windows has not released the execution. It is stuck.
The redundant Ctrl+Break action probably resolves the lingering execution.
I found hitting ctrl+break while the macro wasn't running fixed the problem.
I would try the usual remedial things:
- Run Rob Bovey's VBA Code Cleaner on your VBA Code
- remove all addins on the users PC, particularly COM and .NET addins
- Delete all the users .EXD files (MSoft Update incompatibilities)
- Run Excel Detect & Repair on the users system
- check the size of the user's .xlb file (should be 20-30K)
- Reboot then delete all the users Temp files
I have came across this issue few times during the development of one complex Excel VBA app. Sometimes Excel started to break VBA object quite randomly. And the only remedy was to reboot machine. After reboot, Excel usually started to act normally.
Soon I have found out that possible solution to this issue is to hit CTRL+Break once when macro is NOT running. Maybe this can help to you too.
Thanks to everyone for their input. This problem got solved by choosing REPAIR in Control Panel. I guess this explicitly re-registers some of Office's native COM components and does stuff that REINSTALL doesn't. I expect the latter just goes through a checklist and sometimes accepts what's there if it's already installed, maybe. I then had a separate issue with registering my own .NET dll for COM interop on the user's machine (despite this also working on other machines) though I think this was my error rather than Microsoft. Thanks again, I really appreciate it.
I have had this problem also using excel 2007 with a foobar.xlsm (macro enabled ) workbook which would get the "Code execution has been interrupted" by simply trying to close the workbook on the red X in the right corner with no macros running at all, or any "initialize" form, workbook, or workheet macros either. The options I got were "End" or "Continue", Debug was always greyed out. I did as a previous poster suggested Control Panel->Programs and Features-> right click "Microsoft Office Proffesional 2007" (in my case) ->change->repair.
This resolved the problem for me.
I might add this happened soon after a MS update and I also found an addin in Excel called "Team Foundation" from Microsoft which I certainly didnt install voluntarily
I would like to add more details to Stan's answer #2 for below reasons:
I faced this issue myself more than dozen times and depending on project conditions, I chose between stan's voodoo magic answer #1 or #2. When I kept on facing it again, I become more inquistive that why it happens in first place.
I'd like to add answer for Mac users too.
There are limitations with both these possible answers:
if the code is protected (and you don't know password) then answer #1 won't help.
if the code is unprotected then answer #2 won't let you debug the code.
It may happen due to any of the below reasons:
Operating system not allocating system resources to the Excel process. (Solution: One needs to just start the operating system - success rate is very low but has known to work many times)
P-code is the intermediate code that was used in Visual Basic (before .NET) and hence it is still used in the VBA. It enabled a more compact executable at the expense of slower execution. Why I am talking about p-code? Because it gets corrupted sometimes between multiple executions and large files or just due to installation of the software (Excel) went corrupt somewhere. When p-code corrupts. the code execution keeps getting interrupted. Solution: In these cases, it is assumed that your code has started to corrupt and chances in future are that your Excel workbook also get corrupt giving you messages like "excel file corrupted and cannot be opened". Hence, as a quick solution, you can rely on answer #1 or answer #2 as per your requirements. However, never ignore the signs of corruption. It's better to copy your code modules in notepad, delete the modules, save & close the workbook, close the excel. Now, re-open the workbook and start creating new modules with the code copied earlier to notepad.
Mac users, try any of the below option and of them will definitely work depending on your system architecture i.e. OS and Office version
Ctrl + Pause
Ctrl + ScrLk
Esc + Esc (Press twice consecutively)
You will be put into break mode using the above key combinations as the macro suspends execution immediately finishing the current task. This is replacement of Step 2.
Solution: To overcome the limitation of using answer #1 and answer #2, I use xlErrorHandler along with Resume statement in the Error Handler if the error code is 18. Then, the interrupt is sent to the running procedure as an error, trappable by an error handler set up with an On Error GoTo statement. The trappable error code is 18. The current procedure is interrupted, and the user can debug or end the procedure. Microsoft gives caution that do not use this if your error handler has resume statement else your error handler always returns to the same statement. That's exactly we want in unwanted meaningless interruptions of code execution.
My current reputation does not yet allow to post this as a comment.
Stans solution to enter the debug mode, press twice Ctrl+Break, play on, save did solve my problem, but I have two unexpected twists:
My project struture is password protected, so in order to get into the Debug Mode I had to first enter Developer mode, click on the project structure and enter the password.
My project is a template file (.xmtl). I opened the file via double click which opens it as .xml with a "1" at the end of the previous file name. I fixed the bug as by Stans instruction and saved it as that ...1.xml file. When I then opened the template again, this time as template, and wanted to apply the same bug fix to that file, the bug was gone! I did not change this file and still no bug at executing the Macro. This means to me that the bug is not actually in the file, but in a (hidden) setting in Excel.
If it's a phantom breakpoint:
1 Delete the offending line of code
2 Run the code again
3 Repaste the line
I found this laughably simple solution after spending a couple days wading through all the answers here and elsewhere. I figured, if I link it to my original question it might help some other poor chap, since the question it's on is VBA break execution when there's no break key on keyboard and this is more applicable.
Link to original answer
I faced the same issue today. Resolved it with these steps.
Create a new module
Move the procedure that is causing the issue to this new module.
Save project
Run macro again.
This time, the code execution will run till completion without any intermediate stops.

How do I get rid of the "cannot empty the clipboard" error? [closed]

Closed. This question is off-topic. It is not currently accepting answers.
Want to improve this question? Update the question so it's on-topic for Stack Overflow.
Closed 10 years ago.
Improve this question
Right now, I'm getting it in Excel 2007, but I've gotten the same error in pretty much every version of Excel I've used since 97. The only discernable similarity is that happens on my office PC. It's never bothered me on my home PC.
In Excel 2003, I was able to mess around in the clipboard options until it went away. In 2007, though, the options seem to be seriously limited and generally useless. Google wasn't much help, either.
check this tip. worked for here
http://mobeer.blogspot.com/2009/01/excel-2007-cannot-empty-clipboard.html:
This might save somebody some time and headaches if google picks it
up. I was getting a 'Cannot empty the Clipboard' error every time I
moved cells around in Excel - eventually I mucked around with the
settings and made it go away. Here's how; In the excel main menu
(glass globe w/logo), click Excel options, then Advanced, then turn
off 'Show paste options buttons'
How exciting was this as my first post of the year?
Update: I still haven't found a permanent solution but I found another
thing that seems to help. In Excel 2007, from the "home" tab, the
first thing on the left is the clipboard tool panel. Expand the panel
to view the clipboard and in the clipboard you might find "cannot
empty clipboard" as an entry. Empty the clipboard, keep the panel open
for a second or two while you do a few cut and pastes/drags etc. and
then the bogey seems to go away.
I call this the cable dance because back in the day I had a printer
that only worked if you unplugged the cable, shook it out and plugged
it back in.
Good answers by Paul Simon and Steve Homer, I shut down team viewer and that did the trick.
Skype or other programs may trigger the same glitch, but in this instance, I recalled the problem occurred when I tried to cut n paste a 2MB file from remote system through windows right click rather than using "File Transfer function in TV. An error message appeared, then the problem with Excel "'Cannot empty clipboard' message.
This problem occurs when you are working on a remote system. After copying and pasting a huge amount of data it shows the error. I have found the solution to this problem.
Go to remote systems task manager and perform the following task
Go to Task Manager > Processes
Look for "rdpclip.exe"
End that process
Your problem will be solved.
I found this advice:
There are a few steps to solve your
problem:
First thing to do is Clear items from
the Office Clipboard. If the Microsoft
Office Clipboard is not displayed in
the task pane, click Office Clipboard
on the Edit menu. On the Office
Clipboard task pane, do one of the
following: To clear all items, click
Clear All .
Next thing is to switch off the
clipboard show option. To do this,
what you can do is to again display
the Clipboard menu (select Office
Clipboard from Edit Menu). And in the
selection button "Options" at the
bottom of the screen, select this
particular option: "Collect Without
Showing Office Clipboard"
and now, you are relieved of the bug.
Hope this helps.
here. I have the problem, but it's sporadic. I just tried the technique, and I don't see the problem, but since it's sporadic I won't know for a while if it's gone for good.
I got rid of the problem by unchecking the option for "Alert before overwriting cells" in Excel options. I'm using Excel 2007
If you can't find the clipboard, then close that excel sheet and reopen it again. This will solve your problem.
Try http://support.microsoft.com/kb/207438
which will work for 2007 if you follow v12.0 in the registry.
Are you running Skype? This has been the best solution I have found to get rid of the "cannot empty the clipboard error" in Excel 2007 & 2010. Delete the Skype add-on in IE and/or Firefox and good-bye annoying error!
In reply to rjacobs7 post on February 28, 2011
Cannot clear clipboard error - Windows 7, Excel 2010 -
This error occurs nearly every time a drag and drop of cell contents is attempted. I've had this same error over the past 10 years on older computers and older versions of Windows and Office. It has now reoccurred with a new laptop running Windows 7 64 bit and Office 2010. The issue can be replicated only if a browser - IE or Firefox - is open at the same time that Excel is open. Having Word and/or Outlook open at the same time will not cause the problem to occur unless a browser is also open. This error is extremely irritating and no solutions from Microsoft or other posts on this issue resolve it.
I have a solution - at least for me! Delete the Skype add-in in IE and Firefox and the "cannot clear clipboard" error after a drag and drop goes away when IE and/or Firefox are running. Apparently some sort of memory-management issue with Skype, Office and the browsers.
I've read lots of blogs on this subject going back to 2005!!
I'm sure that Paul Simon is right (see his submission to this thread) and it's a question of finding which program on your machine is locking the clipboard. I do not run the programs listed in various solutons suggested (eg on Microsoft website) nor am I in a networked or virtual environment so for me those aren't the locking programs (but might be for you). Similarly I don't have the RDP task going in my processes. For me the locking program is the Skype Add-in.
I am not a sophisticated user and am scared of altering my registry so didn't want to go there.
I have now been able to reproduce accurately the "cannot clear the clipboard" message by turning on and off the skype addins in internet explorer. This is easy for amateurs to do and might be one of the more common clipboard locking programs:
I first confirmed that I can turn on/off the problem in Excel by opening/closing internet explorer.
Then I disabled the skype addins:
Internet Explorer: Tools menu --> Internet Options ; Programs Tab ; Manage Add-ons button; Toolbars and Extensions selected in panel on left - scroll down to find skype add ons. Press Disable button.
NB have to restart Internet explorer before this works.
.... 4 days later.... it's still working
I copied a picture (instead of text) that I had in my excel 2007 file and that solved the problem for me. The picture copied to the (then empty) clipboard. I could then copy cells normally even after clearing the clipboard of the picture. I think a graph object should also do the trick.
I have seen various answers which say when I uninstalled this or that it worked. I think that the uninstall is probably just sorting out an issue in the registry, rather it being an issue with the particular application that is being uninstalled.
I have also seen cases of people saying kill the RDP task but I don't have that and I still have the error.
I have seen cases of people saying clear the clipboard in Excel, but that doesn't work for me - nor does changing the settings in the Clipboard.
I believe that the issue is that an application has a lock on the clipboard and that application is not releasing it. The clipboard is a shared resource, so that implies that each application has to get a lock on it before changing it and then release the lock once it has completed the change, however, it looks like sometimes the lock is not released.
I found that the following cured it. Close down all MS applications including IE and Outlook. Check Task Manager processes to make sure that they are all gone.
Then restart the application where you had the Copy and Paste issue and it will probably then work.
Regards
Paul Simon

Resources