Microsoft Word. Edit | Copy no longer works

[AndrewMozley]

I am running Windows XP and Microsoft office. Occasionally I find that I am unable to copy a block of text to the clipboard, either using Ctrl-C or Clicking on Edit at the top of the screen, then Copy.

If I display the Office Clipboard (Edit | Office Clipboard) I can see that the text is not going to the clipboard.

Wordpad continues to copy to the clipboard, so I can copy from Wordpad and then Paste in Word - but that is not what I want to do!

I believe that this is a very long-standing issue, previously discussed on this site, but I do not remember seeing a solution. The only way that I can usually resolve the problem is the reboot the machine. Does anyone have a solution? Thanks in advance.

 

[wayneryeven]

I sometimes see this myself with related errors such as "Unable to copy to clipboard". Though it often does copy still.

Unfortuantely i think the only solution could be a reinstall of Word if thats the only program affected. Failing that as its clipboard could be Win issue. Is your system up to date with all Office patches?

 

[kjv1611]

Is that the ONLY problem occuring in these instances, or are there other issues that occur at the same time?

The reason I ask, is b/c one friend/customer of mine (using Office 2007, probably 6 months ago) had a similar issue, but there was much more than copying that didn't work correctly. There were several interactive buttons/options that were suddenly not working.

The fix for it was replacing or editing a corrupted registry entry. I actually had to do that for them on 2 different occasions, so I saved a shortcut to the MS article that gave the directions for the repair.

If you think that may be what it is, do a search for MS Word 2007 registry fix.... something like that.

I can help locate that if need be.

 

[xlhelp]

Have you checked to see if you have the Blaster Virus?

Canadian eh! Check out the new social forum Tek-Tips in Canada.
With the state of the world today, monkeys should get grossly insulted when humans claim to be their decendents

 

[AndrewMozley]

Thanks very much everyone. On further examination, it appears to happen when I am editing a text file (in my case a .prg file from my old DOS applications). It seems that Word does not like copying stuff from a text file to the clipboard. When I revert to editing a .doc file, Ctrl-C works again.

I can get round this with much labour by opening my .prg file, saving it as a .doc file, editing it (using Ctrl-C &c) then saving the result as a text file again (accepting the rule for saving it in Windows or MS-Dos format). But it is rather a business.