Cut and paste does not work between excel documents

[Guest]

I am unable to cut (or copy) a range of cells and paste them into another
excel document. I am only able to paste them into a worksheet in the same
document I am working in. Has anyone experienced this, or know how to correct
the problem?

 

[Fred Smith]

Cut and paste between spreadsheets works well. Many people use it often. Tell us
what error you are getting, or what you mean by "unable to ..."

 

[Guest]

Oh I know it usually works, I am an accountant and use it all the time. That
is why it is particularly frustrating to me now that I cannot use it. This
isn't a "how do I cut and paste?" question, it is a "my excel is not
functioning properly, does anyone know why?" question. Basically what is
happening is that I will copy a cell or range of cells, then when I switch
over to a different spreadsheet to paste it, it is as if it has never been
copied. If I click edit> paste the paste is grayed out, or if I do a control
v, which is what I usually do to paste, it does not paste anything. I have
tried it on my co-workers computers and it works on theirs. This just seems
to be a strange problem I am having.

 

[Dave Peterson]

Sometimes, macros can destroy the clipboard.

Any chance you have an event macro that runs when you swap workbooks
(workbook_activate could be it).

You can test it by starting excel in Safe mode (no macros will run).

Close excel
windows start button|Run
excel /safe

Then file|Open both workbooks and see what happens.