Copying and pasting stops working from time to time (from outlook into word)

Question

Sometimes when I copy text from an outlook email and paste it into a word doc the copy function does not work. The text is not added to the clipboard. And when I click "paste" all I get is the last text that MS allowed me to copy. No matter how many times I try to copy new text, the text does not get into the clipboard (and so I cannot copy and paste it). A MS tech rep helped me last month by updating my word software (from 365) so when it started happening again yesterday I updated my word software (from 365) and that did not solve the issue. I got help from a MS tech rep just now. I am able to copy and paste again but the tech rep was not able to figure out WHY my software intermittently stops allowing me to copy and paste. Help.

Answer 1

Hi @Dante DiPirro ，

What's the specific version of your Outlook 365(File>Office account>About Outlook ), please first ensure that you have updated to the latest version of Outlook. And I would like to confirm if you could paste the text in other programs when the issue occurred(such as Notepad or others).

If you couldn't paste it anywhere, the issue may be related to your client, according to my tests on multiple version of Outlook, I could copy and paste all text normally from Outlook message to word, which seems to I couldn't reproduce your issue. Based on my research, I found some similar thread that mentioned some add-ins may cause it, in this case, it's recommended to restart your Outlook in safe mode directly when the issue occurs in next time(Windows + R > type "outlook.exe /safe"> enter).

If it could work normally in safe mode, we could try to disable the add-ins gradually to check which causes the issue(File>Options>Add-ins, COM add-ins,Go>uncheck the add-in to disable it)

Also, consideirng other third-party programs may also affect the issue, if it possible, it's suggested to close other programs or perform a clean boot in windows directly to check.

Hope that would be helpful to you.

---

If the response is helpful, please click "Accept Answer" and upvote it.
Note: Please follow the steps in our documentation to enable e-mail notifications if you want to receive the related email notification for this thread.