Copying cells working only sporadically

[NowWhatHaveIDone200]

I am having a strange phenomenon since I installed MS Office to an older
Windows XP system I have. Copying cells in Excel has become ahit or miss
proposition. I finally figured out that when I attempt to copy cells, for an
unknown reason, a large majority of the time it now copies the cells as
embedded objects. This happens for long periods of time making Exel
worthless and then mysteriously it goes away. I think this same situation is
affecting other programs. My theory is the MS Office install has somehow
damaged normal Windows XP processing of clipboard copies. 70% of the time
all copies are being copied as embedded objects. Does anyone have any
experience with something similar?

 

[Dave Peterson]

Maybe you can explain what you're doing in more detail?

Are you copy|pasting
from and to the same worksheet?
From and to the same workbook?
or from and to different workbooks?

If you're working in two different workbooks, make sure you open both workbooks
in the same instance of excel.

Close excel (all instances)
Open the first workbook (anyway you want)
Open the second via File|Open (or ctrl-o)
and test.

 

[NowWhatHaveIDone200]

Unfortunately, I am doing simple copy and pastes from within the same
worksheet and same workbook. Most times when I now try to copy a formula to
several cells, I get either errors or strange results. If I try to do a
"paste special" normal options do not appear. I instead get options as if I
am trying to paste an embedded object. While I first noticed this after the
install of an older version of MS Office, I believe the problem goes beyond
Excel. I downloaded Open Office in an attempt to have a spreadsheet that
works only to find that it too is now exhibiting the same problem. It
appears something really bad has happened to standard copy/paste
functionality after the MS Office install. I think the install impacted
Windows XP in a way that I don't understand and can't fix and it is affecting
multiple programs.