What does the message "cannot empty the clipboard" mean and how do I get rid of it when cutting and pasting in Excel?

It depends on the version of Excel.  For example in 2007, on the Home tab, touch Clipboard and then Clear All

Hi,

 

There are a few steps to solve your problem:

First thing to do is Clear items from the Office Clipboard. If the Microsoft Office Clipboard is not displayed in the task pane,

click Office Clipboard on the Edit menu. On the Office Clipboard task pane, do one of the following: To clear all items, click Clear All .

Next thing is to switch off the clipboard show option. To do this, what you can do is to again display the Clipboard menu (select Office Clipboard from Edit Menu).

And in the selection button "Options" at the bottom of the screen, select this particular option:

"Collect Without Showing Office Clipboard"

and now, you are relieved of the bug.

Hope this helps. 

 

 

Regards,

 

Harry Yuan

The "Collect without showing office clipboard" didn't help for me in Office 2007. I found using cut & paste instead of click & drag is an easy workaround.

The above doesn't seem to work, Harry. 

It's 2013 and it still doesn't work.  any other ideas?