Clipboard fails to paste

[Allan Editor]

In Word 2003, and also Excel, I can copy items to Clipboard, and delete
(individual item)and Clear All work, but neither clicking on an item nor
paste (individual item) nor Paste All does anything. Clipboard collects
items from different applications and programs and they are visible in other
programs. Closing programs and restarting does not help. I have tried
searching for info on this in various Help files, and here in MVP, and have
played with Options, and no luck. Anybody have any ideas? Thanks very much!

 

[Terry Farrell]

I find your problem description confusing. Are you saying that you cannot
paste anything into Word? Does copy/paste work inside a single document:
that is, if you copy something from a page, can you paste it somewhere else
on the same page? Are you using the Office Clipboard or some other third
party clipboard utility?

 

[Allan Editor]

Sorry if that wasn't clear. Anything from any application can be copied TO
the regular Office Clipboard and is visible on it. But nothing can be pasted
FROM the Clipboard into any application, regardless of where it originated.
BTW, regular paste (of the last thing copied) works normally.

 

[Terry Farrell]

Allan

This is usually the result of either a third party clipboard utility
interfering with the Office Clipboard or restrictions applied using TweakUI
or a similar Windows registry setting tool. Just occasionally, it can be a
third party add-in interfering with Word.

Try the following test starting Word in Safe Mode and seeing if you can
paste in from the Office Clipboard. From Start, Run, type in

winword /a

and press enter. Word starts in its default install mode bypassing all
customisations, add-ins, macros, etc. Are you able to paste correctly now?

Terry

 

[Allan Editor]

Terry --
Thanks for the advice. And I didn't know about "safe mode" for individual
applications before. However, this made no difference. The Clipboard still
collects copies, but fails to paste.

One other thought. I foolishly disabled macros awhile back and now it turns
out you have to re-install Word to get it back (presumably because this would
only be done by an "administrator"). Does Clipboard rely on macros?

 

[Terry Farrell]

Virtually every command in Word is a macro, so in built macros cannot have
been disabled as such. You can exclude VBA from part of the installation
which stops the user from creating or editing their own macros. You can also
disable macros in the Trust Centre, but that is only applicable to custom
macros, not the built in commands. So I'm sure that this is inapplicable as
the clipboard is built in to Office and does not rely on custom macros. It
is still more likely that some third party tool/utility or custom macro is
stopping the Clipboard from working. Perhaps there is a custom paste macro
installed (third party) that interrupts the built in paste command, but you
have disabled the macro so that it doesn't run.

Terry