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Jon Firooz's avatar
Jon Firooz
Copper Contributor
Oct 03, 2017
Solved

Copy/paste no longer working in Excel

Sometime in the last few months the copy/paste function within Excel (Office 365 version) stopped working for me.  I have updated Windows and all Office apps to the latest version but that hasn't fix...
excel
  • Wyn Hopkins's avatar
    Wyn Hopkins
    Mar 11, 2018
    I’d recommend that everyone having thus issue goes to File > Feedback and send a frown, putting your details in the section and start it [Can’t Copy Paste]

    Also what version is everyone in who’s having this problem ? File > Account

    It will read something like
    Semi Annual Channel
    Build 1234.567
jervis .'s avatar
jervis .
Copper Contributor
Jan 28, 2018

Hi Jon,

 

I have the exact same problem on both my surface pro 4 and on my freshly formatted desktop pc.

In Excel 2016, I cannot copy any cells. The dashed lines will show briefly and then disappears.. A copied cell usually have the dashed lines circling it all the time.

When I try to paste, a left bracket shows up. "  (  "

 

Can anyone help us solve this mysterious problem..?

  • jervis .'s avatar
    jervis .
    Copper Contributor
    Jan 29, 2018

    Hi Jan, none of the methods work.

     

    Below is a sample of my freshly formatted PC and freshly installed Microsoft Office 2016.

    What I did was:
    1) Select the A cell and press Ctrl+C

    2) Select the B cell and press Ctrl+C

    3) Select the C cell and press Ctrl+C

     

     

    As you can see, there is this bracket ( somehow automatically copied on top of the A/B/C selections. This is really weird..

    • null null's avatar
      null null
      Copper Contributor
      May 27, 2018

      I'm on the same boat as jervis. every time I do Ctrl+C, the Ctrl+V result is always opening parentheses "(". The funny thing is that it also happened on LibreOffice Calc. So I suspect it's not MS Excel problem.

      Clearing the Clipboard content sometimes helped, but not all the time.

      Any clue?

    • JKPieterse's avatar
      JKPieterse
      Silver Contributor
      Jan 29, 2018
      In that case I am out of ideas I'm afraid!
      • Marie Dawson's avatar
        Marie Dawson
        Copper Contributor
        Feb 04, 2018

        I have had the same problem, complicated by the "excel not responding" issue.  

        In an effort to solve that problem, I changed some settings under options.

        Well, then my large workbook quit behaving nice.  I would copy a row to one or more rows and all I got was the results from the copy reappearing in the new rows.

        Well, that was cured with switching the calculations from manual to automatic.  Fixed the copy paste problem!  Did I feel dumb?  You bet.  I faintly remember using the manual calculation on a large worksheet from 20 years ago...

        Now onto the "excel not responding" issue.  I've been trying to dump tons of formatting (color, borders, etc.) and checking for those stray columns/rows that had accidental formatting.  I saw that in one of my searches on google.  It seems to help, except in the process, the message comes up again and sometimes doesn't clear for hours, even overnight.  It's hard to dump formatting if you can't access the file and save your changes.  I have been dealing with recovered files, multiple saves and so on.  Sigh...  I may have to start over with these files and recreate them.  They are great grade calculators, with a sheet for each area (homework, attendance, quizzes, etc.) and pull into a summary page for final results.  Lots of "vlookup" action between sheets.  The fancy formatting with colors, borders, boxes helped to avoid errors with data entry.  I teach large classes (100+) and this has evolved with each graduate assistant, computer, software change over the past 15 years. Probably quite a patchwork job by now.  I might be on the road to sanity if all of this works.

        I hope the manual to automatic switch in calculations works for you.  Good luck.    -  Marie

         

         

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