Here's the problem: I copy between an excel sheet & a word document. In the word document there is a table of values (4X2) I like to copy and paste into excel. Here's what I observe: by using paste special I could select "text" (without any formatting) and paste from word document into excel worksheet. The data will be pasted into a 4X2 rectangle on the excel worksheet.

My question: is it possible to know the exact size of the region that exists on my clipboard just before the actual paste?

reason: I have several regions where I union into a global restrict zone where I cannot paste data into. Let say this global region is A=union(a1,a2,a3). Because the data is coming from word I do not have ready access to the excel range object so there is no way for me just to intersect A and the incoming data to find out if pasting is forbidden at all.

constraint (1): I cannot perform undo because I am running in a VBA class routine where there is nothing that I can undo after the paste. So I need to find out if I can paste or not. After pasting it is too late I will not be able to revert my changes.

constraint (2): The word & excel applications are running in separate instances. One does not know the existence of the other

design: I like to hook my paste into a private handler in my excel application to see if I can freely paste on my excel sheet if any part of it runs into my forbidden zone I will put up a warning to user and discard any subsequent action.