Excel cannot complete task, not enough memory resources message

[Sossity]

I have been copying and pasting data from my old spreadsheets to new ones, and using format as table on them. All goes well to start; I select only the rows, columns that have data, remove any previous formatting; then copy/paste into the new sheets, then apply format as table to only those cells and columns that have data that I just figured out how to do.

After a few times of this, I get a message saying this will take some time to do, and an option to click continue, then, I click continue, and then a message comes up saying excel cannot complete the task, not enough memory, resources.

So then I am stuck, or faced with copying/pasting row, by row, column, by column, instead of a block of cells.

I have tried closing and reopening excel, increasing the memory, clearing out temp files, and sometimes it works a little bit, and then I get the message again.

[FlameRetired]

Have you tried clearing the clipboard between large copy / paste?

If you are not familiar with Clipboard manager. Click Home > click the small diagonal arrow in the lower right of the clipboard group.

[MarvinP]

Hi Sossity,

Is there a chance you are also copying things besides cells? Like Objects or boxes or pictures? If you did, your file would grow fast.

Use the "Go to Objects" to see if you have any. http://chandoo.org/wp/2012/03/12/go-to-special/

[Sossity]

I looked for objects, none were found, checked clipboard, it was clear, I did try one other thing, and it seemed to work so far; I would select the cell range that had the data I wanted to copy from the old sheet, then I would select the same cell range the data would fit into on the new sheet, and then click paste, and this seems to work, no error message.

what I did before was just select all the cells in the new sheet, and then click paste, and after a few times, I would get the error message. So I thought maybe excel thought I was trying to copy data into all the cells, so then I went to selecting just those cells that the new data would fit into, click paste and it seems to work now, hope it continues to.

[FlameRetired]

Good deal. Please keep us posted.