Copy & Paste not always working - randomly

I feel certain this has something to do with memory management. I have 128Gb RAM and over 200TB of storage on my PC. I never close out apps and often have most of the Creative Suite open as well as Cinema 4D, Excel, Word, and Visual Studio. 

The copy thing in Illustrator only happens when I have had tons of things open for a long time. It seems to “forget” how to copy and paste. Like it has run out of memory. I allocate a great deal of RAM and scratch disk space to it, so it doesn’t happen every day.

If this were a driver issue, it would happen all the time that the driver was loaded. It doesn't.

If this were a competing clipboard app, the same thing would happen; it doesn't. 

Corrupt preferences still would happen all the time; it doesn't.

None of the solutions explain how this problem seems to come and go. 

But all of these solutions tend to hint at the fact that they are using less RAM afterwards. Nobody suggests that installing something new helps; it’s just removing existing drivers/software/preferences, etc. 

I’m wondering if they are using a portion of RAM that is traditionally considered “available” for short-term storage of things like cut and paste. If they are somehow being locked out of that portion of RAM because another app/drivers is using it, it could cause this problem with being unable to copy/paste. They need to check memory management and run some persistent diagnostics on someone’s machine that has this problem. The diagnostic should report when the problem happens, and they can figure out how to resolve it.

The biggest thing that everyone should come to terms with is that this is 100% an Illustrator problem. No other software has this problem and no other sofware would suggest that you have to uninstall other software for their app to work. That is an unreasonable request. 

Illustrator Devs should spend less time adding features and more time solving these critical issues that affect so many people. 

Having same problem in June 2026! Please help me!

Uninstalling the Logitech stuff solved this problem for me.

Found the setting that solved the problem for me:  unchecking GPU performance (Preferences > Performance). Working with Windows 11, AI 2026.

I had this problem too and found the solution for myself: If you have a Radeon graphics card and have installed the AMD software, try closing the “AMD Software Host Application” program in Task Manager. After that, copying elements and CTRL+C worked again immediately for me.

I did find one solve that I suspected as the third party. If you have windows clipboard history turned on (Windows+V), it saves things that were copied. I noticed when you turn this off (Start>Type "Clipboard">go to settings>turn off), illustrator seems to work again with the stupid copy paste issue. 

I have had this problem regularly for several years, and I search on it regularly. The most recent thing I found suggested it's a Logitech problem via their software. I uninstalled Logi+ and any other Logitech related software (I use a Logitech mouse, but it works fine without the software). That made an immediate differnce. YMMV, but give it a shot folks. It has been driving me bats for years. 

Well apparently Adobe doesn't really care how much their products slow people down.  Being that it is now 2025 and the issue still exists should be a clear sign they don't care.  I'm fed up with Illustrator.  I've been dealing with this copy past issue for the last two years now.  IT NEVER used to do this.  More than half the time I need to use it, I have to repeatedly press control C, at least 5 times, over and over again....  then it will finally take.  Sometimes, it just doesn't and I have to play manual games to line stuff up.  I can never paste in place.  It's so stupid.  Other programs dont' do this, EVER.  Been looking for a solution the entire time, and NOTHING.  

My most updated Illustrator crashed 100% of the time when copying or cutting. Sometimes it didn't even carry out the command at all. I turned to this page and found one answer below from Monica Gauser.
What remedied the situation immediately was simply going to Edit/Preference/Clipboard and turning off the option "Copy SVG Code". Magic.