New
#11
I could be wrong too Some of my information is mixed up between many releases.
At some point Office had an add-in for a special clipboard. It allowed a list of objects, not just one, to be held in it's clipboard.
It was a good idea if you wanted to copy a number of things and paste them into different files. You could paste the 1st and 4th copied text into 1 Word document, then you could paste the 2nd and 3rd copied text into a different document.
Sometimes, this special clipboard got hosed. By limiting it to one object, that cleared up the problem. You might be able to just empty the Office clipboard to see if that helps.
A quick test is to close all Office applications and see if the problem continues. I don't know if the special Office clipboard stays alive in the background or not. To be honest, I can't recall when the Office clipboard was introduced, so it might not even be on your system.
The article below doesn't list Office97, but take a look - it might explain better than I have.
See: Copy and paste multiple items by using the Office Clipboard - Word