After you do the Copy the status bar in Excel's lower left corner should say
"Select destination and press Enter..." After you switch to the other
workbook it should still say that. If it doesn't that explains partially
what's going on - something is clearing the clipboard. What it would most
likely be is a macro that runs automatically when a workbook is activated or
deactivated.

--
Jim
"wllee" wrote in message
...
| We have a number of Excel users in our office who cannot copy and paste
| between Excel workbooks. They can copy and paste between worksheets. When
you
| highlight the section to copy and then go to the new workbook both the
paste
| and paste special are "grayed out". This is true whether you right-click
the
| mouse, go to the edit menu, or use control keys. This occurs with any data
| type and the most simple workbooks. I have seen some suggestions here but
| none have worked for this particular problem. I have reset the menus and
| renamed the .xlb files and neither helps. You can open the clipboard and
the
| paste will work, but there is no paste special option. Any help would be
| greatly appreciated. Thanks!