Weird copy/paste issues from excel

Question

Whenever I am trying to copy and pastse data from excel into a powerpoint slide, some of the numbers randomlly will come up with ### instead of the value.  I've tried all the different cut and paste as techniques (paste as value ect), i've tried doing it in pieces, i've tried one row at a time, i've tried changing the font to match the destination, nothing seems to work.  My version of office is up to date.  I've asked people in my office and no one can figure out what is causing this or how to stop it.  Any ideas?  it's not so bad when it's just one or two that randomly blank out, but when it's a whole column of data, that's kind of a pain to type in manually.  Thanks!

Answer 1

Becky,

When data in Excel won't fit the cell, Excel displays it as ##.

To be honest, it doesn't really look as though this is the problem, but it's worth widening the columns where the ## appears (in the original spreadsheet, or by doubleclicking the sheet in PPT if it's embedded).

Answer 2

Oh my god i love you.  That solved it.  I made the column in the Excel sheet wider.  I had seen that happen where if the column was to thin, they numbers are all ###.  Even though the column looked plenty wide in Excel, there was plenty of extra space around the number, when i made the column wider, and then pasted it to Powerpoint, the numbers came up.  That is so weird.  I have been toying with this for weeks.  I had tried making the columns wider in PPT, but the numbers fit so well in Excel, i didn't think it was an issue....

wow. 

thank you so much. 

~B

Answer 3

Hi,

That did not work either.  Can I send the files via private message?  Thanks!

Answer 4

Hi Becky,

I cannot reproduce this from my side when pasting data from a workbook. I had the experience that the data becomes ### in Excel and that will be fixed when I doublee-click the cell. You can try that too.

Here are two recommendations:

1. You can try other options in Paste Special:

For example, if you need the data links to the workbook, you can use Paste(top left on the Home tab) > Paste Special > Paste link > Microsoft Excel Worksheet Object. This way when you need to change the data or the format, you can do that in Excel.

2. If you want static data, you can consider paste it as a picture. Right-click > Paste Options > Picture.

For further assistance, can you share some samples of the files with us? You can remove all the confidential data. To share the file, you can upload the file to a cloud drive and share a link here. If the files are not allowed to share publicly, you can share it via private message.

Regards,

Alex