Office Clipboard

For years I suffered from stuck clipboard in MS Office 2010, especially when setting up newsletters in Publisher. I finally got off my butt and found out what the problem was.

^#&$@#&%$ Office has its own &%^$^$$ clipboard. Sometimes, when you’ve been doing a lot of copy/paste within the working file, it sticks on the last copied item and won’t paste an item copied from another source.

The solution is to clear the Office clipboard — but they hid it so well that it might as well be an “Easter egg”. I always put my favorite commands, at least those that I don’t know a keyboard command for, on the Quick Access Toolbar. Today, I decided to see if I could do that with the well-hidden clipboard. It was so easy, I’m embarrassed.

Hers’s the skinny for those of you who are ribbon-challenged:

First…

Ribbon - Home
Ribbon – Home

Then, find the damned clipboard, and right-click on the nearly invisible corner-arrow-thingy

Find Clipboard
Find Clipboard

Do it!

Right-click menu
Right-click menu

And there it is

Quick Access button!
Quick Access button!

Click your new button to make the clipboard appear and disappear. Click “Clear all” for instant relief of Clipboard Constipation.

Clipboard
Clipboard

These screenshots are from MS Word, but the menu is the same for Publisher or Excel. I’m hoping it’s the same in Office 2013.

There is a keyboard shortcut, but it’s relatively complex. Much as I like using the keyboard, even I find the mouse version of this trick faster.

I’m still flinging out the not-so-rhetorical question: Why the HELL didn’t they make it more obvious in the first place? Why have something that is supposedly useful so well hidden, and with no option to turn the whole bloody thing off, when it can be such a butt-pain?

Quick-n-dirty screenshot series by IrfanView