Forum Discussion
Copy Paste not working in Excel
First we need to get a more thorough description of the symptoms, I think (I say that as someone who used to teach problem solving, technical problem solving, to scientists and engineers)...
So you've given an opening statement but here are further questions to help narrow down possible causes.
You've said 20 of as many as 50 rows of figures actually copy; that's a decent start.
It might be necessary to get more precise, but let's go with that for now.
- Are the rows that do copy (and those that don't) all together? Or are they randomly distributed among the ~~50 rows?
- Does this happen all the time? Does it happen only on this particular set of sheets, but Copy/Paste operates "normally" in other workbooks?
- Are the rows of figures consisting of cells with actual numbers in them, or are they formulas displaying as numbers?
- If you copy numbers singly rather than in bulk, can you take a number that doesn't copy when processed "in bulk" and succeed in copying and pasting it when you do it by itself?
- Are the numbers all positive numbers, a mix of positive and negative, financial figures, something else?
- Is the area in which you are pasting "virginal spreadsheet territory" or has it been occupied before by a previous set of numbers?
Let's go with those questions for now. As you may have detected, each of those questions (depending on the answers) could lead to a different cause and therefore a different solution. That's why it would be premature to simply say "Do X and all your problems will be resolved."
- What do you mean by all together? I select 50 rows of data, some rows could be blank or an actual figure but that shouldnt stop the copy paste.
- This has happened before but fixed itself after i shut down my laptop, i tried restarting but the problem persists. I do not use excel often - copying from excel to excel, mainly working on a singular excel.
- They are actual numbers, but even if they are formulas i could paste "As Values"
- Yes i could but it would take time in finding what number didnt get copied over. I have copied in segments so like every 5 - 10 rows but even this has the same copy paste problem. I would rather i find a solution to fix my bulk copy paste problem than use a slower method which would take more time and be prone to more mistakes.
- They are all percentages - no negatives.
- The column i paste all the data is blank.
I will update my post with a table with dummy data explaining my situation better.
First if all, let me explain a bit more what lies behind the questions. As I said in my first post, we needed a more complete description of the symptoms, as that's what's needed before the correct treatment can be determined. You presented an initial description only. You've now given a bit more complete description, with your image of rows copied and pasted, but at the time, we only knew that only about 20 out of as many as 50 were accurately copied. So here's an analogous situation for your consideration, to illustrate the necessary process.
- You go into the doctor's office with a complaint: "My left arm hurts. Please give me a solution (i.e., fix it)." Let's assume that your doctor has seen this morning five other people with left-arm-pains and they've all been sprains, treated by some pain killers and a routine of physical therapy. Would you want your doctor to prescribe that same treatment without further question?
- I hope not.
- Left arm pain can be caused by multiple things: sunburn, sprains, abrasion on the skin, compression fractures, more complicated fractures, ... up to heart attack. To treat your complaint with the same treatment that worked for the last five patients would be malpractice. First we need to get the symptoms better defined. That might take one minute or less--just looking at the skin would take care of some of the possible causes--but it might take longer. And there'd be questions, physical probing--turn your arm right, now left; and possibly an EKG to eliminate (or confirm) the heart attack possibility if other questions pointed in that direction.
My questions were intended to serve that purpose of probing for how your complaint, "not copying consistently," more fully manifest itself. None of them were suggestions for treatment. So question #4, for example, was not how I was suggesting you resolve the problem, but a way of saying (back to the analogy) "turn your arm to the left, now to the right"....experimenting with a part of the situation, to try to undercover what could be going on.
Your situation is a tricky one to diagnose. Even your recreation of it just raises more questions, more possible causes.
That display, and the fact that rows sometimes move to a different row, relative to the origin, makes me wonder if there are hidden rows in the source data, or hidden columns. Is that possible?
NikolinoDEhas suggested a treatment that may or may not be what's needed. Have you tried it? I've never heard it said that the clipboard itself might occasionally need to be cleaned. Worth trying.
Anyway, at this point, I'm wondering if you could post a copy of the actual Excel sheets. Working just with verbal descriptions, even with static images or representations, just isn't the same as seeing the actual "patient" And please do it as a new posting in the chain, not as an edit to the original. That would help any other potential helpers here recreate the chain in its full chronological order.