Why does Excel say "there's [an issue] with the clipboard"?

I had to paraphrase the error from Excel because Superuser doesn't allow "problem" in the title, which is a bit amusing in this case. The actual error, as I'm sure anyone who uses Excel is aware, is this:

There's a problem with the clipboard, but you can still paste your content within this workbook.

I'm not asking how to solve this problem (because based on some Googling I don't think it's possible). In my decades of using computers I don't remember a single other program having problems with the clipboard, so my question is this: Why does it happen? What's the technical reason? Why is Excel different to every other program?

This happens when I'm copying cells in Excel. It doesn't happen (I think) when copying text within a cell (i.e. by editing the cell, selecting the text and copying). I can extremely reliably make it happen by copying a few cells in a row. The cells can contain anything or nothing. If I copy more than 3-5 cells within 10 seconds or so I consistently get the error.

Solution 1:

Apparently this happens when some other program on the computer "locks up" the clipboard. Here is the relevant paragraph from this link.

When Excel shows this dialog after a copy (CTRL+C) action, it means that another app has a lock on the system clipboard. In this situation you can still paste within Excel. However you cannot paste to another app like Word or Outlook which uses the clipboard.

I have no idea how to unlock the clipboard or even find what program is using it though. So any help will be appreciated on that one.

Solution 2:

I was able to fix this by pressing Windows Logo button + V which brings up the clipboard history, The history was off so I turned it on and it fixed the issue.