If I have text in my clipboard, and I open up Excel (either to paste it into
Excel or to check numbers ofr something else), Excel clears out my clipboard.
Why does it do this, and how can I make it stop? It's extremely inconvenient
and annoying.

Is this Microsoft's way of telling me to never ever close Excel?

(For the record, I'm using Excel 2002 in WinXP Professional)