Clipboard service is unavailable

This article describes an error in the legacy Windows ClipBook Viewer. It does not apply to the clipboard history feature in Windows 10 and 11.

In older versions of Windows, you may have seen a copied item in ClipBook Viewer but been unable to paste it. The program could display this message:

The ClipBook service is unavailable or is not started.

Contact your system administrator to have this service started. (0x4000)

This message refers to the old ClipBook service. Instructions for that service should not be used to troubleshoot clipboard history on current versions of Windows.

To avoid losing future copied items, use Clipdiary clipboard manager. It monitors the clipboard and saves text, images, HTML, and file lists in a searchable clipboard history while it is running. It cannot recover items that were lost before it saved them.