How to make Excel retain the contents of its clipboard

Question

I'm making a list in Excel where many rows have the same data in a number of columns, enough so that I'd like to hit Ctrl-C once on this set of common data, and then just hit Ctrl-V every time I make a new row that has those attributes.

The problem is, after I paste one time using Ctrl-V, and then go to type in the header for the next row, Excel, removes that information from the clipboard, so if I want to copy it again, I have to select it and hit Ctrl-C again.

I can work around this by pasting the data into Notepad as a tabbed list, then copy from Notepad using Ctrl-C. This way, the clipboard is managed by Windows, not hijacked by Excel.

Is there an option or some other way to copy/paste so that Excel won't empty the clipboard contents even if I type between pastes?

Answer 1

You can use the "Office Clipboard" manager to hold copied data for a longer period of time. Click the button in the lower-right of the Clipboard group to pull it up.

Whenever you copy data, it will be dumped into the manager. To paste the item, click on it. Subsequent Ctrl-V pastes will paste from the highlighted option in the clipboard.

Answer 2

The official reason is that Excel doesn't really have cut and paste, it has move and copy. That's necessary because Excel automatically does reference fix up. For example, if cell A2 is defined as =A1, and you move cell A1 to A3, cell A2 will be updated to =A3.

If Excel actually cut things to the clipboard you would somehow need to have a reference pointing >into< the clipboard which is bizarre and for which there is no reasonable syntax. In other words, Excel doesn't want to leave you with dangling references during a move operation and isn't confident that it would be able to fix them up correctly when you completed the move by selecting "Paste."