@Dave-R I managed to finally get it to work a couple days ago. I thought I'd been installing the latest version, but checking the update thru the Help drop down it was saying there was still newer. I ran that and it hit the COM surrogate issue again. I ended all those instances and tried again and it installed perfectly and has worked just fine the last few days.

@Rich-O-Brien It doesn't seem to recognize that command, not pasting anything that way. Trade off, since I am already setting everything up as a dynamic component, I can add descriptions there, copy and paste into that, then copy and paste from that into the menu and it works fine. at least that saves the external notepad. In anycase, the description also doesn't show up until you click on the component in the menu like you're going to insert it in the model, then it shows up just fine.