Excel can't paste or record macros

[janetts]

Hi.
I was working with a friend this morning who just got hooked up to her office through VPN. She also just started using Excel 2013. We had a couple of problems as follows:

1. Every time we tried to paste something, we got a message that Excel couldn't paste. To get around it, we used Paste Special, which worked, but what would account for the persistent problem with regular pasting?

2. She was doing some repetitive work, so I suggested that we record a macro. It worked on my laptop and on her personal one, but not on her VPN-connected work laptop. I made the Developer tab visible. We got as far as naming and describing a macro (several times), but then again, we'd get a message: "Excel can't record macro." We tried reducing macro security settings to the minimum temporarily, but it made no difference.

I haven't encountered this before. Could this be due to the VPN, her company's security policies, or something else?

Any thoughts appreciated.

 

[JLGWhiz]

Hi.
I was working with a friend this morning who just got hooked up to her office through VPN. She also just started using Excel 2013. We had a couple of problems as follows:

1. Every time we tried to paste something, we got a message that Excel couldn't paste. To get around it, we used Paste Special, which worked, but what would account for the persistent problem with regular pasting?

2. She was doing some repetitive work, so I suggested that we record a macro. It worked on my laptop and on her personal one, but not on her VPN-connected work laptop. I made the Developer tab visible. We got as far as naming and describing a macro (several times), but then again, we'd get a message: "Excel can't record macro." We tried reducing macro security settings to the minimum temporarily, but it made no difference.

I haven't encountered this before. Could this be due to the VPN, her company's security policies, or something else?

Any thoughts appreciated.

Sounds like the permissions she has are limited to just manual inputs from the keyboard. But I am surprised about the pasting in Excel. I can understand the restriction of pasting to webpages or databases, but within an Excel workbook sounds a bit over the edge.