I hate this icon more than Clippy!

September 29, 2005 9:00 AM

Stupid annoying trivial Excel (2003) question.

How do I get rid of the annoying icon that appears after doing a paste (never a paste from within Excel, always from another application). The icon looks very similar to what is on the toolbar. I've tried looking in Options, Auto Correct Options, etc. but I just can't find the "off" switch. Sometimes it will just go away - but I don't know how/when that will happen either. Help!

Sorry. Couldn't refine my Google search adequately enough.

posted by ObscureReferenceMan to computers & internet (10 comments total)

Do you mean the "Paste Options" button? If so, follow this procedure:

"On the Tools menu, click Options.

On the Edit tab, clear or select the Show Paste Options buttons check box to hide or display the Show Paste Options button on the worksheet. "
posted by selfnoise at 9:06 AM on September 29, 2005

I'd post a picture of the icon... if someone would tell me how.

Stupid noob!
posted by ObscureReferenceMan at 9:07 AM on September 29, 2005

Try...

Tools
Options
Edit Tab
Then clear the check box on "Show paste options"
posted by unccivil at 9:09 AM on September 29, 2005

That's it! For an "experienced Excel user", I can be quite dense sometimes. Thanks, selfnoise.
posted by ObscureReferenceMan at 9:09 AM on September 29, 2005

No problem. Excel's option set is not exactly easy to drill through, particularly now that they've added all kinds of weird crap you don't really need.

The way I found this, BTW, was by hovering over the icon until Excel told me what it was called. (Paste Options) I then did a Help Search for Paste Options using Microsoft's Online Help and this was one of the documents that popped up.
posted by selfnoise at 9:12 AM on September 29, 2005

This has bugged me as well, but I never bothered to figure it out. Thanks AxMe.

So, for all you Mac Excel 2004 users out there, the path is:

Excel
Preferences
Edit
De-select Paste Options.
posted by baltimore at 9:32 AM on September 29, 2005

That paste button is the best addition to Office in years! It goes away when you move the focus, and it's much better than the alternative - Edit, Paste Special, Choose from unintelligible list of options, hope for the best.
/unrequested opinion
posted by Popular Ethics at 10:00 AM on September 29, 2005

I always appreciate these questions and answers about Word and Excel (although this happened to be one I'd already known from experience). But I'd like to address the oh-so-helpful "switch to [X]" crowd. See, some of us have "jobs" where we go to "work" and our computers already have this crap software installed, and we have to make the best of it.

Yes, there are people who use IE and MS Office because they want to, or they're used to it, or it came with their computers and they don't know how to install something else. But keep in mind that most of us posting here from 8-5 are likely doing so from work, where, like it or not, purists, we don't have the option to install whatever the hell software we want.

/end rant
posted by peep at 11:48 AM on September 29, 2005

Popular Ethics - I asked because the dam thing would stay almost all the time - regardless of focus. (?!?!)

peep - Thank you!
posted by ObscureReferenceMan at 11:54 AM on September 29, 2005

I have observed that it doesn't go away after any amount of time unless you click into another cell (as if to start typing in it). I want it to show up for a little while after the paste, but I also hate that it sits there for forever and a day.
posted by misterbrandt at 1:03 PM on September 29, 2005