Best Solutions to Copy and Paste Not Working in Word

I Cannot Copy and Paste in Word

“I've been using Word for the past 2 weeks, and I keep facing a problem: copy and paste not working in Word. I copy a few lines to paste it somewhere else in my text and it works, but then when I try to copy another line, it won't work. How do I enable copy and paste in Word?”techcommunity.microsoft.com

Although the copy and paste features provide you with the ultimate convenience in duplicating content like images, texts, and other types of data in Word or other platforms, sometimes you may encounter the problem of copy and paste not working in Word like the above user. Today we are going to talk about how to deal with this problem.

How to Fix Microsoft Excel Cannot Paste the Data Error

This post mainly talks about how to deal with the “Microsoft Excel cannot paste the data” error in Windows 10/11.

Read More

Fixes to Copy and Paste Not Working in Word

Fix 1. Make Sure the Keyboard/Keyboard Shortcut Is Working Properly

If you cannot copy and paste in Word, the first thing you need to do is to make sure the keyboard or keyboard shortcut is working properly. You can try to copy and paste data into another text editor or platform and check if it works. If not, you may find solutions from this post: 7 Methods to Fix Copy and Paste Function Not Working.

If the issue is limited to Microsoft Word, you can implement the following solutions.

Fix 2. Clear the Clipboard History

Excessive clipboard data is the main cause of copy-paste failure in Word. So, to fix the issue, you need to clear the clipboard history by referring to the following steps:

Step 1. Press the Windows + I key combination to open Settings.

Step 2. Select the System option.

Step 3. In the Clipboard section, scroll down to click the Clear button under Clear clipboard data.

Fix 3. Run Word in Safe Mode

If there are conflicting add-ins or extensions running in the background, you may be unable to take advantage of the copy-and-paste functionality in Word. Running Word in safe mode is an effective way to rule out problems related to add-ins/extensions.

First, press the Windows + R keyboard shortcut to open the Run window. Second, in the input box, type winword.exe /safe and press Enter. After that, a new Word document will pop up in safe mode, and you can check if the copy-and-paste feature work.

Top Ways to Fix Excel Not Responding When Printing

Excel not responding when printing? How to fix Excel not responding without losing data? You can read this post to get the answers.

Read More

Fix 4. Repair Microsoft Office

If Word safe mode does not resolve the problem, you can choose to repair Office. It is beneficial when Office product is not working or running into some errors. For the major steps to repair Microsoft Office, you can refer to this tutorial: Repair an Office application.

Fix 5. Scan Your Computer for Viruses

Virus or malware infection can also be responsible for the copy-and-paste failure in Word. In this case, antivirus software like Windows Defender is of great help. You can use them to scan your computer to detect and kill viruses.

MiniTool Power Data Recovery FreeClick to Download100%Clean & Safe

Top Ways to Recover Data After Deleting a Partition

Hard disk partition was accidentally deleted? Now you can get the most effective solution to recover data after deleting a partition.

Read More

Bottom Line

If you are suffering from the problem of “copy and paste not working in Word”, you can try the solutions listed above to address it.

Should you have any questions about MiniTool Power Data Recovery, please contact us via [email protected].