PRB: Paste Option Disabled when Clipboard Holds Excel Range

 Last reviewed: January 10, 1997
Article ID: Q156236
The information in this article applies to:
  • Microsoft Visual FoxPro for Windows, versions 3.0, 3.0b, 5.0

SYMPTOMS

The general field of a Visual FoxPro table holds an object such as a Word document or an Excel worksheet. This kind of object may be embedded in or linked to a general field by programming or manually by copying the object to the Clipboard, then pasting it into the general field.

You may want to save to a general field only a portion of an Excel worksheet--for example, a range of cells without all of the other data from that worksheet.

After you select the range and copy it to the Clipboard, if Excel is still open, OLE with Excel embeds the entire Excel worksheet when you use the Paste or Paste Special menu options to embed or link into the general field of a Visual FoxPro table. You must close Excel in order to use just the range of cells on the Clipboard.

However, when the Clipboard contains the data of a range of cells of an Excel worksheet and Excel is closed, the Paste and Paste Special bars of the Visual FoxPro Edit menu are disabled.

CAUSE

When the Clipboard contains the data within a range of cells of an Excel worksheet, that data is not an object but, rather, is text. Because it is not an object, the Paste and Paste Special bars of the Edit menu are not enabled.

WORKAROUND

Insert an blank worksheet into the general field, then paste the data from the Clipboard into that sheet.

STATUS

This behavior is by design.

MORE INFORMATION

The Visual FoxPro general field is intended to hold OLE objects, either linked to the original object or embedded as a copy of the original object. Microsoft Excel does not copy the data from a range of cells as an object, but rather as text. On the other hand, Microsoft Word copies a text selection from a document into the Clipboard as a Word document. That is an object, and you can paste it into a Visual FoxPro general field.

Steps to Reproduce Behavior

  1. On a computer that has Microsoft Visual FoxPro, Microsoft Excel, and Microsoft Word, start Excel and open any workbook.

  2. To select a range of cells, click the upper left corner of the range, then, holding down the shift key, click the bottom right cell of the range.

  3. On the Edit menu, click Copy to copy the data to the Clipboard.

  4. Close Excel and save the "Large Clipboard" when prompted. If you do not close Excel, the entire worksheet is pasted to the general field in step 10.

  5. Open Microsoft Word and open a new document. On the Edit menu, click Paste Special. A dialog box asks whether you want to paste formatted text (.rtf) or unformatted text. The Paste Link option button is disabled. The key is that the Clipboard contains text, not an object.

  6. Close Microsoft Word and start Visual FoxPro.

  7. In the Command window enter the following command to start a new table containing a single general field: 

          CREATE TABLE gentest (genfield g)

  8. Enter the following commands in the Command window: 

          APPEND BLANK
      BROWSE

  9. Double-click the word "gen" in the genfield field of the one row in the gentest table in the Browse window.

  10. On the system menu, click Edit and observe that neither Paste nor 

        Paste Special is enabled.

Instead, the "Insert Object" bar is enabled, and you can use it to insert a new Microsoft Excel Worksheet into the Edit window holding the empty "genfield" field. Then you can paste the data into that worksheet.

KBCategory: kbinterop kbprb
KBSubcategory: FxinteropExcel FxinteropOle
Additional reference words: 3.00 3.00b 5.00 kbdsd VFoxWin



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Last reviewed: January 10, 1997
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