IT:Error when copying a worksheet
From Stiki
When copying a worksheet containing some cells containing large amounts of text, you may get the message:
| Microsoft Excel | |||
 | The sheet you are copying has cells that contain more than 255 characters. When you copy the entire sheet, only the first 255 characters in each cell are copied.
To copy all of the characters, copy the cells to a new sheet instead of copying the entire sheet. | ||
| |||
This can be resolved as follows:
- Go to the original sheet.
- Select the entire contents of the sheet (Ctrl+A).
- Copy the selected cells (Ctrl+C).
- Go to the new version of the sheet.
- Select the entire contents of the sheet (Ctrl+A) or select the first cell, A1, on the worksheet (Ctrl+Home if 'freeze panes' is not enabled).
- Paste over the selected cells (Ctrl+V).
Your two sheets should now be identical.
If you are copying a sheet from one workbook to another, an alternative solution is:
- Ensure that the workbook containing the original sheet has been saved (Ctrl+S).
- Move the worksheet to the new workbook.
- Close the original workbook without saving.
- If you need to, reopen the original workbook.
This method is faster, unless you need to reopen the original workbook and it takes a long time to load (typically only true of workbooks contained huge amounts of calculations, when Excel is set to automatic calculation).
See also: Microsoft support
This problem does not appear in Excel 2007 (and later versions), which can successfully copy entire sheets regardless of the length of the data in each cell.
