I'm wondering if there is any particular reason that might be unique to me, or in any other way have a solution to it.

When I run a query in Access and a recordset comes up, I get varying results as to the length of time it takes to place a recordset on "Copy" (because I then want to Paste it into a spreadsheet).

And it does not actually seem to have all that much to do with the number of records! Whether there are 100 rows or 5000 rows, it should be a matter of a few seconds, right??

But sometimes, it's ridiculously longer. Example, I just ran a query with almost 16,000 results. Granted, that's a lot.

But I started putting them on Copy....went to lunch, came back, and it's made no progress whatsoever. Still says putting on Copy....

what's the deal? I have occasional other queries with 5000 results that takes 2 seconds.

While 5000 is about 1/3 of 16000, this Copy operation is definitely NOT just taking, 3x2 seconds
What other factors am I missing

What code are you currently using?

I mean, simply clicking the upper left hand corner of the resulting recordset in order to select them all, then Ctrl-C to put them on the office clipboard.

Any reason why you're doing that instead of exporting with code? I think it would be faster via code as your clipboard can be limited by several other factors.

well, the fact that you're asking me that illustrates I think, or fleshes out the issue .... that I was guessing access to the clipboard was being somehow limited in ways that were not apparent. (i.e., I can't find other obvious processes going on on my PC that would slow it down), and I wonder why it's so hit-and-miss.

I did just export the query, and it happened nice and fast. I see then, that's a better way.

As to code, unfortunately I have not yet learned to use any code in Access. All I have done is VBA in Excel.