How do I disable Office Clipboard so Copy Paste uses traditional Windows Clipboard

[dwilliamson]

Office 2003
Excel in particular
I can not select a cell ... hit CTRL+C ... select another cell ... hit
CTRL+V. Paste is never enabled. Apparently the Office Clipboard snags
it and this method no longer works. Thanks Bill ... that is a real
productivity booster.

The only KB article that I can find that related to disabling the
Office Clipboard doesn't seem to have an effect.

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;207438

Well that article applied to Office 2000. Except for the version 9.0
(now version 10.0 in Office 2003) the AcbControl does not disable the
clipboard. It just doesn't show it to you when stuff is on it. Excel
continues to use the Office clipboard as the holder of what was copied
using CTRL+C.

Does anyone know how to make Office use the windows clipboard instead
of the Office Clipboard?

 

[Bernie Deitrick]

D,

It may be that a macro was assigned to the Ctrl-V combination.

Try starting Excel in Safe mode to see if Ctrl-V works as expected:

First close Excel
Click the windows start button
Choose "Run"
Type in Excel /safe
Press OK

Your Office installer window may come up, but that is OK.

Then try Ctrl-C / Ctrl-V within a new workbook. If it works, there is a
macro in one of your auto-opened files/add-ins that has Ctrl-V assigned to
it. Then it is your job to find it.

HTH,
Bernie
MS Excel MVP

 

[dwilliamson]

Tried the Excel /safe and I got the same results.

Some more details on what I see. After hitting CTRL+C the cell gets
it's little dashed border like one would normally see and the status
bar says "Select destination and press ENTER or choose Paste". After
about 500 ms the dashed border and status bar text disappear and the
cell looks as if I never hit CTRL+C. However I see the cell copy show
up in the Office Clipboard over to the right (this is normally hidden
and I hit CTRL+C twice to show it).

 

[Bernie Deitrick]

One other thing to try is to disable events. In Excel (unlike other Office
applications), some actions through code after copying will clear the
clipboard. So, run this code, then try using Ctrl-C / Ctrl-V.

Sub DisableEvents()
Application.EnableEvents = False
End Sub

Of course, to turn it back on, you will need

Sub EnableEvents()
Application.EnableEvents = True
End Sub

HTH,
Bernie
MS Excel MVP

 

[dwilliamson]

Bernie,

I am not doing anything code related in Excel. I open up Excel ... it
opens to a new sheet1 ... I click on a cell and type "asdf" and hit
ENTER ... I then use the mouse to click on the cell that I just typed
"asdf" into and hit CTRL+C. That is all I am doing.

 

[Dave Peterson]

Just a wild guess...

Do you use autosave or autorecovery?

If so, what interval do you use?

(Although, I would have thought starting in safe mode would have stopped any
interference from either of these.)

 

[dwilliamson]

Save Autorecover info every 10 minutes is on. The default. The excel
installation is just the default install of Microsoft Office 2003.

Well. Something changed because now CTRL+C works and the cell remains
animated with the dashed outline. Odd. I have rebooted but can think
of nothing else that might have changed. Checked the event logs and
didn't see anything either.

Wierd. For now it works as expected. Thanks for you input guys.

 

[Dave Peterson]

It's magic!!!

Save Autorecover info every 10 minutes is on. The default. The excel
installation is just the default install of Microsoft Office 2003.

Well. Something changed because now CTRL+C works and the cell remains
animated with the dashed outline. Odd. I have rebooted but can think
of nothing else that might have changed. Checked the event logs and
didn't see anything either.

Wierd. For now it works as expected. Thanks for you input guys.

 

[davegb]

Just curious here. What is different when running Excel in "safe mode"?

 

[Gord Dibben]

Dave

Found this when typing "safe mode" in Help. There is more, but these are the
basics.

User-initiated safe mode
You can open any Office program in Office Safe Mode by pressing CTRL while you
start the program or by using the /safe option when you start the program from
the command line.

The following restrictions apply when you open a program in user-initiated
Office Safe Mode. (Some items listed below do not apply to all Office
programs.)

No templates can be saved.
In Microsoft FrontPage, the last used Web site is not opened.
The Office Assistant is not automatically displayed.
Toolbar or command bar customizations are not loaded and customizations cannot
be saved.
The AutoCorrect list is not loaded and changes are not saved.
Recovered documents are not automatically opened.
Smart tags are not loaded and new tags cannot be saved.
All command line options are ignored except "/a" and "/n".
Files cannot be saved to the Alternate Startup Directory.
Preferences cannot be saved.
Additional features and programs will not automatically load.


Gord Dibben Excel MVP

 

[davegb]

Very interesting! Should have thought of looking it up in Help.
Thanks Gord