Paste-special values disabled

[XP]

Using Office 2003 and Windows XP;

On the Paste button drop down (standard toolbar), in certain workbooks, the
"Values" option is not available. Even though I do a very basic copy of two
values in one column from another workbook.

Even though protection is turned off at both the sheet and workbook levels,
this function is grayed out.

I tried to manually turn it back on in code using:

CommandBars("Standard").Controls(12).Controls(2).Enabled = True

But this neither causes an error nor enables the control. What would cause
this behaviour and how can I fix it?

Thanks much for your assistance.

 

[Jim Thomlinson]

For paste special to work both the workbooks must be open in the same
instance of XL.

 

[Kim from Westfield]

Same topic, different circumstances. One tab in my workbook used as a
look-up table. This particular tab is a very simple worksheet containing
only data (and one concatenate function to pull together 3 cells for the
look-up).

Have been using right-click, drag, Copy here as values only with no problems
until recently (the copy is occurring to the same cell, overwriting previous
contents - is part of the population process).

Suddenly the "Copy here as values only" function is grayed out, although I
can still go through the long process of Paste Special>Values and it works
fine.

Why would that option suddenly be unavailable?

Thanks,
Kim