Keep the Copy

[Eric Patterson]

*****Update September 2018*****

Keep the Copy was designed to improve the experience of copying content to your clipboard based on customer requests. Copy and Paste functionality is different in Excel than most other applications because results from formulas can change and due to the large size of worksheets. Since making the improvements there has been mixed feedback about the changes that we made and it is not up to our quality standards. Effective today, Keep the Copy will be removed from Excel until we have improved the quality and design of this feature.

Thanks,
Eric Patterson
Excel Program Manager

Hi Excel Fans,

Starting with the Excel release available in June, Excel “Keeps” your copy longer. You can Copy your cells, and before you paste, you can still do other tasks like typing or inserting cells.

Based on customer feedback, the dotted “Marquee” stay active for much longer so that you can type, add formatting or many other things before the paste operation. We also made both the “Insert” and “Insert Copied Cells” commands available after the copy operation. Now, if you are copying data to another worksheet, only to realize you need more room, you can insert a variable number of cells and then paste without having to re-copy the original range!

If you want the Marquee to disappear, you can use the ENTER key to perform the paste operation, or after the paste, you can press the ESC key to cancel the copy.

More information about Copy Paste
The way in which copy and paste works in Excel has always been a bit different than other applications.  When both the source and destination are in Excel, the range is “Marked” and the dotted line marquee is shown for the range that was copied.  Excel has this behavior because formulas are adjusted and recalculated when pasting to the new range.  The Marquee shows the range that is currently marked and what will be pasted.

Keep the ideas coming
If you have other suggestions and ideas for the next version of Excel, please Add Feedback, Provide Suggestions and Vote on the other suggestions

[Don Steele]

Has this feature been removed? It's Sep/2018 and I have version 1810 10828.20000. This functionality seems to have been omitted in this version. I suspect its removal was prompted by complaints about having to press ESC to make the marquee stop flashing. Perhaps MS could add a setting where the feature can be enabled or disabled by the user.

[Sean Healy]

Agreed with Don Steele, I was having a separate issue where I was trying to open multiple files and for whatever reason, certain files won't open after clicked upon.  My tech team had me log out and back into excel and now the beloved "keep the copy" feature is  gone.  This is ruining my day as it was my favorite feature ever!  It did return for about 10 minutes and then was gone again!

[John Doyle]

I would like you to add this feature back in even if it's just an option. I have a report I work on multiple times a week that I use this feature a lot on. 

[Kandy Minx]

I found my way here because I also just randomly lost this feature and I work between multiple sheets. This is driving me CRAZY by adding so much time to my data entry. Is it gone for good?? 

[Sean Healy]

https://excel.uservoice.com/forums/304921-excel-for-windows-desktop-application/suggestions/20324245...

[S. Chaiyaraj]

TT please bring back the "keep the copy" functionnn

[Thomas Crinall]

Please bring this back as this a best a frustrating change. At worst, it means I need to spend considerable extra time over the course a working week faffing with reports that already take up enough of my time. At least, allow users to enable / disable Keep the Copy and it's component features individually: for example, allow the "insert..."and "insert copied cells..." options to remain whilst the data is on the clipboard!

[Maulikshah]

Please bring this Feature Back. I was so used to this feature and now all of a sudden it's gone. why not have an option to enable or disable based on personal preference by users 

[henryjfry]

Yeah the "keep the copy" feature proved to be an incredibly frustrating mess, why would you ever want to be uncertain about what ctrl+v is going to do, madness!

However an excel "clipboard history" would be a very useful feature so you can preserve previous copy and pastes without changing the current function of the paste button.

In fact a windows wide clipboard recorder would be very useful and prevent me from having to use 3rd party software to overcome the limitations of the office clipboard application.

[Vladislav Borets]

bring back the "keep the copy" !