Cannot paste range to a single cell

Excel 2013 often does not allow a column range, for example A2:A25 to be pasted to a single cell in another workbook. It gives an error: "We can't paste because the Copy area and paste area aren't the same size."

Of course they are not the same size when I'm trying to tell Excel where the top cell of the range should be pasted in the target workbook. I also cannot paste the copied range into a range exactly the same size when I select the paste range to be the same size.