Question Painfully Slow Copy/Paste

[hbusche]

I copy and paste in/out of access to excel regularly and recently it has become painfully slow to copy and paste only in access. Excel and all other programs I have no issue. It isn't a huge number of records, excel has no issue with it. I have cleared the clipboard, restarted, and now I don't know what else to do? Any tips or tricks I could try?

 

[Ranman256]

DONT use copy/paste, instead run an append query.

 

[hbusche]

Is there a reason I shouldn't be able to copy/paste? It is much faster.....

 

[isladogs]

Is there a reason I shouldn't be able to copy/paste? It is much faster.....

How can it be faster if you say it is painfully slow?

 

[hbusche]

When it works correctly it is significantly faster.

 

[hbusche]

It worked just fine at my old job, and works now for my coworkers. So tips for how to troubleshoot this problem would be very much appreciated.

 

[isladogs]

1. When you paste, you have no control over the datatype that will be used in Excel. Exporting the data from Access is far better as you have full control
2. It shouldn't be noticeably faster anyway
3. There is a limit to the amount of data that can be held on the clipboard

Alternatives:
Ranman's suggestion is fine for importing data from a linked Excel table into Access. However if its going to be done regularly I would personally set up an import specification or do it all using VBA

You can't append data from Access to Excel as linked Excel 'tables' can NOT be edited.
However you can do this using code or an export specification

Issues to consider:
Have you compacted your database recently?
What do your co-workers have that you don't e.g. more RAM?
What do you have that your co-workers don't e.g. more applications running, less powerful PC, different Office version etc
Are you trying to export a huge number of records?
Do you get any error messages. If so, what?

For example, I've just run an append query in Access where 2 fields from a large table of approx 2.5 million records were copied to another table in a different database. I got an error "System resource exceeded"
In that case, a registry hack was needed to fix the error so I could run the query

 

[hbusche]

Issues to consider:
Have you compacted your database recently? It compacts on close, but it happens in every database.
What do your co-workers have that you don't e.g. more RAM? We have the exact same specs on our computers.
What do you have that your co-workers don't e.g. more applications running, less powerful PC, different Office version etc I have a more recent version of access then my coworkers, I just downloaded 2016 to see if that fixed the problem - it didn't.
Are you trying to export a huge number of records? 2500 records, excel doesn't seem to have a problem with it.
Do you get any error messages. If so, what? No error message, sometimes it says not responding but if I wait eventually it will complete the copy or the paste.

 

[isladogs]

Issues to consider:
Have you compacted your database recently? It compacts on close, but it happens in every database.
What do your co-workers have that you don't e.g. more RAM? We have the exact same specs on our computers.
What do you have that your co-workers don't e.g. more applications running, less powerful PC, different Office version etc I have a more recent version of access then my coworkers, I just downloaded 2016 to see if that fixed the problem - it didn't.
Are you trying to export a huge number of records? 2500 records, excel doesn't seem to have a problem with it.
Do you get any error messages. If so, what? No error message, sometimes it says not responding but if I wait eventually it will complete the copy or the paste.

There's nothing obvious here to pick up on except....
I strongly recommend that you NEVER use automatic compact on close as this has been known to trigger corruption.
Compact manually when there is a reason for doing so ... but not every time you close the db