This just started to come up in last 2 weeks. Message says "scripting Runtime or syntax error"

10140 can't access the clipboard

Running W10 & Dragon 15.61 KB2020.

Causes? Is this unique? Cures?

Not much to do about from within Dragon, I'm afraid.

The Windows Clipboard is s single ressource on your machine and whenever any application wants to put something on the clipboard, it first has to open/lock the clipboard, then put the desired contents there and then close/release the clipboard again.

If this last step is omitted (usually due to sloppy programming), the clipboard will be locked by the offending application as long as it is running.

In rare cases there's a collision during the short timeslice neccessary for manipulating the clipboard, but if the same effect repeats when you retry a second later, then it's probably not a time-related effect.

Since you wrote that shutting down Word releases the clipboard, chances are that some addon or macro is going postal.

You could try eliminating one by one to find the culprid.

hth

mav