Question

Matt,

I have not tried to enable them one at a time because when I disable all of them and then enable all of them, the problem is solved for a short while. Yesterday it was resolved for about 24 hours. I'll see hat happens tomorrow AM.

Does "Reset Firefox" remove the Add-ons or what?

Thanks,

jbacinti

Reset Firefox creates a new user settings folder (Firefox profile) and migrates part of your data. Your plugins don't go away, but your extensions do. The link in Matt_G's post has the details.

If you want to paste only the text and not the formatting of whatever you are copying from Firefox into Word 2003, it will always be fastest to use the Paste Special feature. This should be available on the right-click menu (or Edit>Paste Special), choose Unformatted Text or Unformatted Unicode Text.

I appreciate the above responses to try and help me resolve this problem. However I don't think I made myself completely clear when describing the problem. In short, I never had this issue in the past; it just started possibly on the last upgrade. I understand the suggestions above for not copying formatting, using Notepad, etc but I never had to do any of that in the past. I haven't added any add-ons although I'm not sure if maybe some of them updated with the upgrade to FF 15.0.1. Maybe someone at Mozilla could look into this for me.

Thanks,

jbacinti

Can you see any pattern to when this problem occurs? In particular, what kinds of content are affected? For example, in recent versions, there have been some changes to what Firefox places on the clipboard when you use right-click > Copy Image.

In Word, if you open the Paste Special dialog, which format has Word selected as the default?

If there is any pattern at all, it seems to be that once I restart FF in Safe Mode, shut it down and restart it, the problem goes away for 18 - 24 hours. I know; that seems real weird.

I don't recall that I have tried to "Copy Image" but I just tried it now and it works. But remember, I went through the above activities about 3 or 4 hours ago.

When I right-click in Word 2003 with data on the clipboard from FF, I do not get a "Paste Special" option. When I choose "Paste Special" from Edit, the default option with an image on the clipboard is HTML. It's the same when I've copied text to the clipboard.

I've never had to use "Paste Special" before. Now that means sometimes I have to clean up what I've pasted in Word for formatting, fonts, etc which is not a problem for me. Generally my copying and pasting from a browser is limited to recipes and other cooking related articles from a wide variety of web sites. Occasionally (this morning is a good example) I copy text from a forum I subscribe to and the Paste function on a new email using Windows Live Mail locked up the application.

My question about Paste Special was not to propose doing that from now on, but just to understand whether something peculiar is happening with the clipboard formats.

I copy text from a forum I subscribe to and the Paste function on a new email using Windows Live Mail locked up the application.

This was pasting from one page in Firefox to another page in Firefox?

Next time you are going to paste from that forum, after selecting, could you right-click, choose View Selection Source, and copy the selected HTML source to a text document (such as Notepad) first? Then if there is a problem we will have some insight into what was in the copied code. (To share that, you could try using the site http://pastebin.com/ since pasting HTML code here makes a mess.)

"I copy text from a forum I subscribe to and the Paste function on a new email using Windows Live Mail locked up the application."

This is copying from a page in FF to a New email document from Windows Live Mail, part of the Windows Live Suite not a FF page.

Here's a sample of what I get copying from the forum:

<font class="mediumtxt">“Bewildered and lost without his teleprompter, President Obama flailed all around the debate stage last night. He was stuttering, nervous and
petulant. It was like he had been called in front of the principal after goofing around for four years and blowing off all his homework”<br>
- Charles Hurt, Washington Times<br>
<br>
"I don't know what he was doing out there. He had his head down, he was enduring the debate rather than fighting it. Romney, on the other hand, came
in with a campaign. He had a plan, he was going to dominate the time, he was going to be aggressive, he was going to push the moderator around, which
he did effectively, he was going to relish the evening, enjoying it."<br>
- Chris Matthews, MSNBC<br>
 <br>
President Obama argued that government plays an essential part in economic growth, while Mitt Romney contended it should get out of the way.<br>
- NYT<br>
</font>

PS: It has been about 24 hours since I've had the issue but have stopped and restarted FF several times for different reasons. I'll post later if the problem returns.

Thanks,

jbacinti

Has anyone had a chance to look at the above data? I still have the problem.

Additional info: I can go to the same website using IE, do a "copy" and "paste" into Word or WLM with no problem.

Thanks,

jbacinti

I was hoping someone who actually used Windows Live Mail would chime in, but perhaps they are fewer and further between than expected.

What happens if you do a two-step copy paste using Word as an intermediary? Word interprets HTML differently than both IE and Firefox, so I don't know whether this will cleanse whatever is choking WLM.

(1) Paste into a blank Word document
(2) Select all (e.g., Ctrl+a) then copy
(3) Paste into Windows Live Mail

The problem is that I cannot "paste" into Word, Notepad or WLM after "copying" from a page displayed in FF. I even tried to paste into Open Org and got the same response, lockup.

There is something out of kilter with FF on this particular PC as I have another using FF, same version and no problem.

On the bottom of FF here I have the add-on tool bar. On the right-hand corner I have the FF orange and blue logo. When I hover the pointer over it I get a dialog box that offers 3 options. They are "left-click, switch rendering engine of current page"; "middle-click, use new tab to switch rendering engine" and "right-click, show IE tab, 2 sites filter". I have no idea what these mean or where they came from. Not sure if this is the cause of my issue but worth posting for help.

Did you try to use Edit > Paste Special in Word?

Word may not work properly with the content that Firefox places on the clipboard.

Sorry, for some reason I thought you could paste into Word.

You mentioned that copy/paste works for a time if you open Firefox in Safe Mode, then close it, then re-launch normally. I can't think of anything Safe Mode does that would persist during your next session, but perhaps this indicates that one of your extensions is the culprit.

The icon and menu you describe sounds like one of the IE Tab extensions. I don't know whether that has any effect on copy/paste.

Why not try disabling all nonessential extensions on the following tab. (All extensions that you can tolerate using the web without.)

orange Firefox button or classic Tools menu > Add-ons > Extensions category

Any improvement after restarting Firefox?

This may be a bigger problem than just pasting into word. I am having problems copying from the Google Translate site, which just began tonight. One other person also had that problem, though he thinks he has it fixed. However, I think his is only a temporary fix, because his fix did not work for me. Please see this thread for more information:

https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/940871

Hi thebigchief, I think that's probably a different issue, since forums probably do not use code from Google Translate (unless they've integrated it somehow).

cor-el,

Edit Paste Special worked. However, I never had to do that in the past.

jbacinti

jscher2000,

Disabling several Add-ons corrected the problem, but remember, starting FF in Safe Mode did the same thing for a short period of time. I'll keep checking for a day or two and then begin the process of Enabling them one at a time to see if indeed one of the Add-ons is a problem.

Thanks,

jbacinti

This is likely a problem with the various content formats that Firefox places on the clipboard and that may vary with what and from where you copy content to the clipboard.
We've seen more of such issues with the clipboard and MS programs like Works in the past and the advice was to use paste special to make it work.

cor-el,

I understand that changes are needed to keep FF meaningful as well as useful. That doesn't explain why I can start FF in Safe Mode, fix the problem but only temporarily. Why wold the "Copy" function not work copying data from FF but work copying the same data using IE?

Yes, since yesterday I have to use MS Internet Explorer instead of Firefox 16.0.2 version, which is useless for me N O W , no cut and paste function of p u r e text anymore. Read the huge amount of failure items in newsgroup on the latest FIREFOX failure.

Or I go back to FF V 16.0.1 instead ?

VERY VERY ANNOYING.

regards df5sx

Hi df5sx, what do you mean by "pure text"? Could you describe the change in more detail?

Coincidentally, there is a utility program named PureText (http://www.stevemiller.net/puretext/) that helps remove formatting when you copy from the browser, but I don't know if that's relevant.

Hi df5sx, if the problem is that copying simply fails (empty clipboard), please note that Firefox allows web site scripts to block copy actions. If you suspect a script on the site might be involved, you could block websites from intercepting and altering cut/copy/paste actions by changing a setting in the about:config preferences editor. Unfortunately, this is a global setting, so if some site is doing something positive by intercepting and canceling or replacing your cut/copy/paste action, you will lose that benefit. Still, it could be worth a try.

(1) In a new tab, type or paste about:config in the address bar and press Enter. Click the button promising to be careful.

(2) In the filter box, type or paste clipb and pause while the list is filtered

(3) Double-click dom.event.clipboardevents.enabled to switch its value to false. You're done with this tab.

You might need to reload the source page you're copying from in order for this to take effect.

It appears that the Add-on Collusion 0.23 is at least part of the problem. With it Enabled, I copied text from a web page and pasted it into a new WLM email. While this didn't lock up the application, it did take nearly 20 seconds before the "paste" function was complete. Does anyone have any thoughts on this?

With Collusion disabled the pastes happen quickly?

This might not be related, but in the thread about problems copying from Google Translation results (clipboard was blank), updating Flash to 11.5 resolved the issue for some users.

Yes, it happens immediately.

I'm already using Flash 11.5.

Click & Clean 4.0 also reacts negatively with Copy and Paste. It hangs up pasting into a new email document from Windows Live Mail. While WLM was hung, I disabled C & C, clicked to restart FF and immediately the paste function completed. Maybe someone at FF should inform the author of C & C.

re: I can't copy translate from google translator...

Firefox cut-an-past error has dis-appeared on Firefox V17 now. Thanks

Yes, since yesterday I have to use MS Internet Explorer instead of Firefox 16.0.2 version, which is useless for me N O W , no cut and paste function of p u r e text anymore. Read the huge amount of failure items in newsgroup on the latest FIREFOX failure. Or I go back to FF V 16.0.1 instead ? VERY VERY ANNOYING. regards df5sx

...but now I can no longer highlight and copy a complete paragraph just the odd phrase and even that is with difficulty as the phrases tend to turn yellow. Is there any way around it?

We have a known bug with selecting text of the translation. We're working on a fix and will try to get it out soon, however I can't guarantee exactly when we'll get it out.

In the mean time, you can still: - select all the text, by clicking somewhere just to the left of the translate, and dragging until after the end of the text. Then you can Ctrl-C copy, or right click to copy

- select a single "phrase", as defined by Google, by right-clicking on a phrase and that will select just that phrase, then you can click copy.

We're working on fixing the bug so you can again select arbitrary amounts of the text, but hopefully this helps in the mean time.

Best, Josh Estelle Senior Software Engineer Google Translate

At least just add a button "Copy to clipboard"

Sorry no excuses are acceptable

Yes it worked fine for years, it worked fine last week. How can google allow such a catastrophic failure?

Why dont they just bring back the old version until these newer versions are properly tested?

The response we get is, "we are working on it". They are oblivious to the fact how many people depend on google translate several times a day. After years of use, It is COMPLETELY USELESS to me also.

Until they can return it back to the way it was

I was working smoothly on Google translate, translating from English into Spanish. After copying the text translated into Spanish and stuck in document d Word I'm writing. Everything worked OK but suddenly stopped working. Keep running the translation function, but does not work on glass and paste to move the translated text to the Word document. No matter how much you select or select all .... No copy-paste functions .... I can not translate the text. The back pay if it works in any other document or page. single web page does not work. Google Translate. I appreciate my help solve this problem as it should to prevent further errors.

it's quite inconsistent.. a moment ago I couldn't copy & paste, then I found a way to copy/paste from translated text by pasting it to another site page, then copy paste again to word doc. Then it doenst work, then it work...I can't be bothered to try it again.

I would say if someone do this the whole day with their text, they are quite idle.. :s

Google / Josh, we'd much appreciate if you could fix the bug soon. Lots of people are looking for it

I have the same problem, yesterday morning and afternoon I was able to do it and in the evening no. I'm unable to transfer the translated document in another document. But I can transfer the original text.

I tried with IE, yes, it's functionning. Generally I'm working with firefox, so now I'm forced to do the translation with IE- google translate.

I am having the same problem - it seem it is only with Firefox... help!!

1. Select the translated text and include in that selection the buttons above the translation boxes (Spanish - English - French - Detect Language English - Spanish - Arabic)

2. Using Control + C, or clicking the right button in your mouse and select Copy of the menu, copy the selected text.

3. Open a Notepad document

4. Paste it using Control + C or clicking the right button and choose Paste.

5. Copy-Paste this text from Notepad to Word. Note. I tried to paste it directly to Word but a box with the link information comes with it and makes it more difficult to delete. It can be done, but I am not good at explaining how.

Hi df5sx, Firefox 17 is now available. Can you update and see whether it resolves your issue?

OK, I'm now using FF 18.0.1 with no change. I've been playing around with it ant all my Add-ons now for about a month. I'm pretty sure the problem now is with either Adblock 2.2.1 or Paste Email Plus 3.3. Could someone check on this? Load either one or both of these Add-ons, Copy text from a website (any site, any text will do) and try to Paste it in either a Word document or a new email from Windows Live Mail. There is a conflict here some where that is making FF almost unusable for me.

Thanks,

jbacinti

I haven't tried installing those, but AdBlock Plus is very widely used, and this problem seems to be rare, so it's probably not AdBlock Plus.

Have you conducted your test in reverse, i.e., disabling those extensions, restarting, and then testing again?

orange Firefox button or classic Tools menu > Add-ons > Extensions category

Have you conducted your test in reverse, i.e., disabling those extensions, restarting, and then testing again? Yes, I have.

But I just ran the tests again and the problem has gone away. Currently I'm running the following Add-ons: Email This Bookmarklet Extension 2.3.0; LastPass 2.0.0; Paste Email Plus 3.3; Print/Preview 0.9; ReminderFox 2.0.2 and Yet Another Smooth Scrolling 3.1.2.

I'll not change this for a few days and see what happens.

Thanks,

jbacinti

This morning I copied a URL from FF to paste in a new email and the email application locked up. I use Windows Live Mail. I have changed nothing since my last post; still running the same Add-ons.

Hi jbacinti, are you copying from the address bar or from a web page? The URL in the address bar should be loaded to the clipboard as plain text, while a URL in a page would be loaded in both HTML and plain text formats. I suspect it's the HTML that's causing the problem.

Is there any pattern as to the sites involved, i.e., sites that require a login or other ongoing session in order to access the content?

I copied the URL from the address bar and not from a document on a page.

After thinking about your second question, I can't really say there is a pattern since both plain text (from the address bar) and HTML and what appears to be plain text from a page both cause the problems. For example, most of what I copy from a web page are recipes (My wife and I love to experiment in the kitchen and with our friends on our BBQ team.) that I reformat into a standard I've put into templates in Word. Also a lot of times I'll copy text from an online forum to paste into a new email for friends, mostly jokes.

Try going to a site like www.allrecipes.com and find any page to review. You might also go to www.lakecumberland.com, click on "Forum" and select the thread "General Discussion". There is a post called "How about a little humor for today" where you can find almost 20 pages of text to copy or just review.

Thanks,

jbacinti

Anyone have additional thoughts on my issue?

Hi jbacinti, sorry I didn't reply sooner but I was out of ideas. Copying a URL from the address bar simply loads plain text into the Windows clipboard, no HTML, so the receiving application has no reason for locking up.

I might have asked before, but in case I missed it: are both Firefox and the receiving application running in the same container? In other words, is either one or the other running in a VM or sandbox that Windows needs to cross when copying from one to the other?

Here's something interesting. I just tried to copy from an email and "paste" into a field on Google Maps in FF 18.0.1 and FF locked up. This is the reverse of what I've been faced with for several months now; copying from FF and pasting to WLM mail or Word. Something is definitely wrong here and getting worse.

As of this writing I'm running the following Add-ons: Adblock 2.2.2 Capture & Print 0.1.6 Email This Bookmarklet! Extension 2.3.0 LastPast 2.0.0 Paste Email Plus 3.3 Print/Preview 0.9 ReminderFox 2.0.2 Yet Another Smooth Scrolling 3.1.2

I've gone through the disabling all add-ons and enabling them one at a time and don't see a pattern. I've done the Safe Mode thing and that too does not resolve. The problem goes away for a few hours after doing any of these steps and returns.

Help and thanks.

Hi jscher2000,

Funny I was posting the above as you were posting your questions. Anyway, no I am not running in different "containers".

Thx,

jbacinti

jscher2000,

I'm now on FF 18.0.2 and the problem has gone away. Still running the Add-ons as I listed above. Was there a fix going from 18.0.1 to 18.0.2?

jbacinti

Hi jbacinti, I haven't checked on what bug fixes were in 18.0.2, but perhaps simply refreshing the program files resolved the issue?

I hope the problem does not return, but if it does, could you try re-running the installer to refresh the files again?

https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/fx/#desktop

If that helps, there might be some malware or other process altering or interfering with the program files. Hmmm...

I'll keep an eye on it.

Thanks.

Just tried to copy from the Forum at www.lakecumberland.com and paste to a new email at WLM. WLM locked up as before. I've changed nothing and frankly have used the PC very little since my posting on 2/13/13. Frustration is setting in...................jbacinti

Did you try to use Edit > Paste Special in Word?

Edit > Paste Special is not an option in Windows Live Mail nor is it an option in Word 2003. I've never had to use anything else other than Paste until I began this thread. I can Paste into Note and then copy from Note to WLM or Word but that seems to be a bit counterproductive.

I'm a big fan of Firefox but this is getting ridiculous with the problem coming and going. Is anyone able to replicate this problem?

jbacinti

Interesting observation: I copied text from an email I was preparing in WLM to Paste in a form for my city government on their website and FF locked up. This is just the opposite of what I've been fighting for months where Copying from FF and Pasting in WLM or Word locks up those apps. Does this mean anything to anyone at FF as to what the problem might be? Does this have anything to do with the Clipboard?

Thanks,

jbacinti

Hi jbacinti, I think someone reported in another thread (or possibly earlier in this one) that Firefox would lock up when they pasted in it, but the problem seems rare.

As for your question about the clipboard, yes, any time you use copy and paste, whether within the same or between two different applications, the Windows clipboard is the mechanism used.

Hi jscher2000,

What's your suggestion then? Do I have to learn to live with this or will someone at FF look into it further?

Thx,

jbacinti

Hi jbacinti, the problem is that as far as I know, we haven't found a way to replicate the problem on any of the volunteers' computers. You can file a bug on Bugzilla, but without specific steps to re-create the problem, it would be pure luck if someone were to guess what needed to be changed in Firefox.

Is it possible that you have any software that tries to compartmentalize or protect the clipboard (or individual applications) in a way that could interfere with pasting between programs?

Well, I just received your response and in preparing to respond I checked to see if the problem was still here and, guess what, everything is working fine. I have changed absolutely nothing; no new programs, no updates, nothing new running in the background. The only "out-of-normal" is that yesterday I had to kill and restart FF because of it locking up when I tried to Paste into it.

During my normal day, programs running are WLM, FF, Windows Explorer plus, in the System Tray, are Stickies, Box Sync, Webroot, Secunia PSI, and Snippy. All of these programs ran long before this copy/paste problem erupted. I can't think any of these would do something out of the ordinary to the Clipboard.

Given what has happened since yesterday (restarting FF) I have to believe it is a problem with FF. Would you not agree?

Hi jbacinti, Firefox is involved. But why WLM would suddenly have trouble retrieving/interpreting the text and HTML Firefox is putting on the clipboard, after it works fine for a time, I have no idea.

I sure would like to hear from Firefox about this issue.

BTW, it has been about 24 hours since I last wrote and mentioned that the problem had gone away. It's back. Just locked up WLM copying a URL from the address bar.

More information for you, I think. This morning I copied a URL that was plain text from a WLM email and tried to paste it into the FF address bar and FF locked up. After I killed it and restarted, I could copy from WLM and Paste into FF. Sounds to me like something in FF gets sideways with the Clipboard.

Hope this helps fix my problem. Thanks.

Moving to FF 19.0 seems to have solved the issue. Does anyone know if my problem was on the "Fixed" list?

Seems I was a bit too happy with 19.0. Just had a WLM lockup trying to copy a URL from FF and paste into WLM. Had to go to Task Manager to kill WLM and then restarted FF, problem went away. Let's take another look at what's causing this.

Thanks,

jbacinti

More info. Using FF 19.0.2 now. Just now I Copied text from an email to Paste into FF and FF locked up. I restarted FF, Pasted the data originally Copied and all worked fine. What is there with the clipboard or the Copy/Paste functions that gets changed or reset that causes and then fixes this problem?

Hi jbacinti, I know it might feel like you are just talking to yourself recently, but I am reading your posts and hoping for new inspiration. The problem in reaching a diagnosis is that it's so intermittent: there's no reliable way to create the problem on demand.

If you are pasting into the URL bar, Firefox will search your history and bookmarks for a match. Perhaps there is some corruption causing Firefox to hang? You probably do not want to delete your entire browser history to test that theory, much less bookmarks. There might be a way to deactivate the searching, such as:

orange Firefox button (or Tools menu) > Options > Privacy

In the "Location Bar" section, change the drop-down to "Nothing." In my opinion, Firefox is a lot less useful without the suggestion features, but if you are looking for something to test, this would be an option.

In any event, that explanation wouldn't apply to pasting into form fields or a rich text editor (e.g., webmail editor).

jscher2000, I'll give that a try. Regarding your comment about this being so intermittent; it appears to be almost consistent. I say almost because a while after restarting FF, the problem returns. I haven't tried to track when by day or keystrokes or area of copying/pasting but I'll try to keep somewhat of a log to see how consistent it really is.

Thanks for your concern and for staying on top of this.

Interesting observation. I made the change you suggested above to the Privacy setting and the option under Tools to Start Private Browsing wend away (greyed out). I changed the Privacy setting back to History, restarted FF and still was unable to Start Private Browsing. Did the same thing with Bookmarks with the same result. Strange.

Sorry, didn't mean you should change the "History" section, but the "Location Bar" section. I don't know how that is labeled in other languages, but it's the last drop-down on that tab of the dialog.

Edit: After a second reading, I think you did change that control, and I just can't understand why it would affect the menus that way.

As long as you are logging, it would be helpful to know whether Private Browsing mode is an issue. I'm sure it doesn't get nearly as much testing as the regular mode.

That's what I changed, the Location Bar section. Under History, I've selected "Use custom settings" and it has been set that way for a long time.

It may be time to try a reset. Make a note of your current extensions. If any of them stores data locally in your Firefox settings, we should investigate whether/how you can migrate that data.

Firefox's Reset feature, as noted much earlier in this thread, duplicates certain key data from your active settings folder into a new one, bypassing extensions, custom preferences, and potentially problematic settings files. You will need to reinstall your extensions; your plugins will still be active.

More information in this article: Reset Firefox – easily fix most problems.

Reset moves your old settings folder to the desktop. Please retain that folder for a couple of weeks until you are 100% certain you don't need anything from it.

Does it make any difference?

OK, I'll try the reset but it will be a few days away. I am tied up tomorrow and leaving for a brief vacation on Friday. I'll return on April 8 to do the Reset and will post the results.