Apparent Excel 2007 Copy & Paste Bug?

[Josh Sale]

I've run into an Excel 2007 Copy & Paste problem that I thought I would
share with the group.

If you open an Excel 2003 (or earlier) workbook in Excel 2007 and that
workbook has data and formatting on one of its worksheets including having
some of its column widths set, and you then select all of the cells on the
worksheet and do a Copy and then switch to a brand new workbook and do a
Paste, the data and most of the formatting comes across OK.

However, the column widths may or may not be pasted depending on what kind
of workbook you are pasting into.

If you have told Excel that new workbooks are of type "Excel Workbook
(*.xlsx)" then the Paste will NOT bring along column widths. If the new
workbook is of type "Excel 97 - 2003 Workbook (*.xls)" then it WILL.

The behavior seems to be that if both the source and target workbooks are
"compatible mode" or if they are both native mode then Copy and Paste bring
along column widths. However when performing a mixed mode Copy and Paste
the column widths aren't copied.

This sure seems like a bug to me. I just finished spending a couple of
hours trying to convince MS support that this was a problem but I don't
think I got anywhere.

What do the experts in this group think?

TIA,

josh

 

[Jim Rech]

This sure seems like a bug to me.

You may have run into a bit of a language barrier with MS. To them a bug is
something that does not work as designed. They are saying I assume that
this is the design. You (and I) may think that the design is poor but that
doesn't make it a bug.

I had some head banging experiences with them in betas until I got this.
"You designed it to do that?!?", I would say. "Well, we considered situation
A and situation B but we didn't consider situation C", (my case), "so by
definition it's working as designed."

The workaround is easy though, Copy followed by Paste Special, Column
Widths.

--
Jim
| I've run into an Excel 2007 Copy & Paste problem that I thought I would
| share with the group.
|
| If you open an Excel 2003 (or earlier) workbook in Excel 2007 and that
| workbook has data and formatting on one of its worksheets including having
| some of its column widths set, and you then select all of the cells on the
| worksheet and do a Copy and then switch to a brand new workbook and do a
| Paste, the data and most of the formatting comes across OK.
|
| However, the column widths may or may not be pasted depending on what kind
| of workbook you are pasting into.
|
| If you have told Excel that new workbooks are of type "Excel Workbook
| (*.xlsx)" then the Paste will NOT bring along column widths. If the new
| workbook is of type "Excel 97 - 2003 Workbook (*.xls)" then it WILL.
|
| The behavior seems to be that if both the source and target workbooks are
| "compatible mode" or if they are both native mode then Copy and Paste
bring
| along column widths. However when performing a mixed mode Copy and Paste
| the column widths aren't copied.
|
| This sure seems like a bug to me. I just finished spending a couple of
| hours trying to convince MS support that this was a problem but I don't
| think I got anywhere.
|
| What do the experts in this group think?
|
| TIA,
|
| josh
|
|

 

[Josh Sale]

The fact that they've made Copy and Paste work so inconsistently (i.e.,
depending on the mode of the source and target workbooks) in XL2007 and
differently from previous versions (at least XL97, 2000, 2002 & 2003) makes
me think its not really working as designed.

I also looked at the What's New in the online help and there is nothing
there that would support this being an intentional change.

I agree that in general the workaround isn't that big a deal. My problem is
that I've got a bunch of macro's that perform these kinds of Copy and Paste
operations and I'm not too excited about changing all of them to accomodate
this "design change". But obviously I will if I must.

Thanks,

josh

 

[Juanita Janse van Rensburg]

I found the same problem when I open Excel on 2 screens, when copying from one to the oter, the cell goes blank. I corrupts your whole document when you save it and try to open it later.