Windows 10 Clipboard Not Copying New Content

Salutations,

INTRO:

I am running into a bizarre situation regarding the windows 10 clipboard, excel, and Microsoft SQL manager. I provide support for the user that has this problem and hit a bit of a roadblock that I was hoping I could get more information on or pointed in the right direction for resources where I could possibly find answers.

PROBLEM:

User is running windows 10 build 1803. User has a SQL query that is saved in an excel spreadsheet that they copy and paste into Microsoft SQL Manager to run and return their results. They then want to copy the results tab (containing in this example about 100 entries) and paste it into a completely separate excel spreadsheet. When they paste the contents from the SQL manager results tab into the NEW excel document it copies the query from the original excel document instead of the data.

ACTION TAKEN

I can work around this issue one of two ways,

  1. Instead of copying the content I save the results as a CSV and just copy the page from the newly saved excel document.
  2. I have to close the original excel document containing the SQL query. This seems to return the function of the clipboard to overwrite data when you select CTRL + C or right-click and select copy like it should.

In addition to this, I have been able to get everything to play nice by simply restarting their computer. I opened up CMD and ran the following command to check for the last time the computer had a fresh boot: systeminfo | find "Time" and found that the machine had been “running” for about 15 days without a restart.

Closing Words

This is more of a quest to understand why clipboard behaves this way and what could be causing the issue (if it returns and a restart doesn’t work). Any inputs would be much appreciated. I did search the forum using the keywoards “windows-10” + “clipboard” + “excel” and found some interesting information but nothing that really pertains to my exact situation. Thank you for your time.