Cannot copy graphics or text from one publisher document to anothe

[lindalou]

Running Publisher 2000 on Win XP. I am unable to copy graphics or text from
one publisher file to another, altho I can copy and paste within the same
document. However, in some cases, I can copy TO the document, even though it
is an old document. It does not seem to matter when the file was created. If
I open a brand-new pub file, I can copy and paste to and from the new files.
Most of the files are brochures (not using a template), but a couple are just
blank pages.

This was not a problem a couple of weeks ago. Before this became a problem,
I updated my Office 2000 and Frontpage 2003 files, as well as my Windows XP
files. I also ran Eusing Free Registry Editor, Registry First Aid, and
CCleaner. Backed up my registry before running these.

Since this problem with copying, I uninstalled my entire Office 2000 and
reinstalled and updated it. The problem is still there. Can someone please
help?

Thank you.

 

[Mary Sauer]

The clipboard is a Windows function. Are all your Office programs experiencing
the same problem? What happens if you select paste special?
It may very well be because you have a mix of 2000 and 2003 products... You
cannot paste from Publisher 2003 to Publisher 2000.

 

[Chuck Davis]

All of the d****d registry cleaners didn't help. As you found out
uninstalling and reinstalling didn't do any thing to help either. But, it
did keep you busy for a while. Also Mary's suggestion doesn't hold water in
that you didn't say that you had Publisher 2003.

Open the file that you want to copy from and "Save as" with a new name. Now
work on the new one. This will eliminate the copy function and, of course,
doesn't solve the problem.

 

[MoMo]

Running Publisher 2000 on Win XP. I am unable to copy graphics
or text from one publisher file to another

The clipboard used by publisher is the standard Windows clipboard. The first
thing you need to do is to establish whether or not other applications can
effectively use that clipboard. What happens for example if you open a text
file in Notepad and copy some text and then open a different text file in
NotePad and paste the text into it? Does that work? And have you tried
similar things with other applications?

The second thing you need to look at is whether Publisher itself is
"trashing" the Windows clipboard when you start it up. I don't use Publisher
much myself (that's my wife's empire and she has been neglecting it lately
because she has allowed herself to become sidetracked by PowerPoint 2007!)
but I use Microsoft's VB6 a lot and I know that VB6 trashes the clipboard if
it has any "add ons" installed. Perhaps you have added something to
Publisher which is causing a similar problem? Try opening two separate
Publisher documents (or creating two separate new Publisher documents) so
that both instances of Publisher are running at the same time. Then copy
some text from one of them and paste it into the other. Does that work? If
it does then try running just one instance of Publisher and copying
something from it to the clipboard *before* you open the second instance.
Does that make a difference. In other words, does that fail to work? If so
then it would appear that Publisher on your system is trashing the clipboard
when it starts up. You really do need to carry out some sensible tests and
report their results if you want to give people here the best chance of
helping you.

By the way, you really do need to be very careful about running these free
registry cleaner programs. Some of them are a load of rubbish and will do
more harm than good, and some of them do their harm deliberately. The
registry is a very complex database which controls almost all aspects of
your machine. The best advice I can give somebody regarding cleaning out and
correcting problems in their registry is to do it themselves manually, and
if they do not understand how to do it themselves then don't do it at all!

Oh. One more point. Did you by any chance create a System Restore Point
before you made all those changes to your system and before you ran those
"iffy" registry cleaning programs? You really should create a Restore Point
before performing anything like that. If you did then simply use the Windows
System restore utility to restore your machine to a point in time before you
made those changes and see if that fixes the problem (it usually does). And,
even if you didn't create a restore point yourself, there are almost
certainly going to be some restore points on your system that were made by
the system itself before you made the changes. Try going back to one of
those.

Mike

 

[lindalou]

Thank you to all for the replies. I do not have PUblisher 2003. Copy function
works in all my other programs and, as I said, does work in some of my old
pub docs and in *any* new ones I create. I've never had a problem with any of
these registry cleaners in the past, which is why I use them, and because the
copy function works in some docs and because I reinstalled everything, it's
hard for me to imagine it's the registry, as shouldn't the reinstall take
care of that?

Mike, I've done all the suggestions you made vis-a-vis copyting this way and
that.
Paste special doesn't work either. I can paste from any pub doc to any word
doc. In PUblisher, the paste and paste special functions will be available,
I'll click on one or the other, nothing gets pasted, and then those functions
are unavailable (grayed out).

Chuck--you summed it up well! And the problem is, I want to copy a graphic
from one pub file to another (or one doc to a pub doc) and I can't!!

I am wondering whether some of these Office updates (critical updates) are
what has screwed things up.

Does it seem best to restore the registry to a time before this began (yes,
I've got backups)? Or might there be other fixes?

 

[MoMo]

Does it seem best to restore the registry to a time before
this began (yes, I've got backups)? Or might there be other
fixes?

Did you do what I suggested and perform a System Restore using a restore
point that was created before you made the changes? By the way, do you have
System Restore turned on? And do you use it to create a System Restore point
immediately before you make any important changes to your computer? I would
suggest that you first uninstall anthing you have installed since the
problems began and then use the System Restore wizard to restore your system
to a point in time before you installed them in the first place.

Mike

 

[Auston]

Here is a workaround:

Follow the resolution steps in this KB article:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/928890/en-us

A warning will appear when you paste between Publisher documents, but if you
click OK it will work.

 

[lindalou]

Thanks. It seems that Publisher is now dead on my machine, so I am just going
to have to upgrade. The disk won't install it on my hard drive
anymore--something wrong with the disk.

I am wondering, though, in case I do somehow get it to work again--will this
fix you suggested work even though I am not getting any error messages? I can
open the files, just can't copy.

 

[Auston]

Yes, it will work.

Thanks. It seems that Publisher is now dead on my machine, so I am just
going
to have to upgrade. The disk won't install it on my hard drive
anymore--something wrong with the disk.

I am wondering, though, in case I do somehow get it to work again--will
this
fix you suggested work even though I am not getting any error messages? I
can
open the files, just can't copy.