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Copy/Paste not working

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The people who asked this question 3 years ago were given a "chosen solution", which didn't work then. And 3 years later the underlying problem is still not fixed. Last week I tried a new solution which meant messing around with the Firefox settings. And it worked - until the next time I restarted the computer.

I copy and paste in many of my activities, which interact with external websites e.g. discussion groups. The current frustration is a discussion about Adobe, which means copying text from one window to another. It does not happen. Unless this is permanently sorted in the next couple of days, regretfully I shall switch to a workable browser, e.g. Chrome. I cannot afford the waste of time repeatedly researching then not fixing a failing feature.

The people who asked this question 3 years ago were given a "chosen solution", which didn't work then. And 3 years later the underlying problem is still not fixed. Last week I tried a new solution which meant messing around with the Firefox settings. And it worked - until the next time I restarted the computer. I copy and paste in many of my activities, which interact with external websites e.g. discussion groups. The current frustration is a discussion about Adobe, which means copying text from one window to another. It does not happen. Unless this is permanently sorted in the next couple of days, regretfully I shall switch to a workable browser, e.g. Chrome. I cannot afford the waste of time repeatedly researching then not fixing a failing feature.

All Replies (6)

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Yes, copy/paste should still work normally both between pages in Firefox and between Firefox and other Windows applications.

General Observations: Occasionally pages interfere with text selection and copying, which is annoying, so on those sites you might need to do something special. Similarly, pasting into plain text boxes (like the ones here) is more consistent than pasting into scripted "rich text" editors -- for the latter, Ctrl+Shift+V (Paste as plain text) or right-click > Paste unformatted text sometimes works better.

What happens when you try to paste -- nothing, misplaced text, duplicate text, terrible formatting, etc.?

Are there particular problem sites?

What was the setting you changed?

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Thank you Copy and paste problem symptoms between Firefox dialogue boxes and other other programs. The paste either appears, or does not, using contl C/cntrl V, or other methods.

1. Within Firefox when writing this message, I can copy and paste 2. Within Firefox when working within the Adobe community site, https://community.adobe.com and https://helpx.adobe.com. I cannot copy and paste within a message, or between Adobe tabs. 3. I can copy either way between Notepad/Excel and Firefox 4. I cannot copy and paste from Notepad/Excel into an Adobe tab 5. I can copy and paste into Notepad/Excel and tabs for other sites from an Adobe tab

So this little investigation shows that the current problem is connected with the Adobe site. I also am unable to copy and paste an image generated in FaststoneCapture (screen grab) into a Firefox tab, i.e. this message Other sites in the recent past have also given problems, but I did not keep a record.

I followed the advice on https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/1411533 (I managed to copy this URL wihout problem) to change the settings. I tried to copy an image from sugarmac's contribution to that dialog using Copy Image. That did not work but copied OK to Word, but not then from Word to this message. I then tried FS Capture, but that would not paste the image in this message.

So I used text copy and past from my settings page to paste the following. dom.events.asyncClipboard.clipboardItem true dom.events.asyncClipboard.readText true dom.events.testing.asyncClipboard true

That seemed to have helped at the time (3 days ago), but the same problem keeps cropping up in random programs and websites. I am by no means unique in having difficulties using Firefox and this has been apparent since 2012. Copy and paste is a normal function which is constantly being used throughout my activities. Without it, the browser becomes unreliable and therefore useless.

There must be something very deep in Firefox that resists any attempt to sort the problem.

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Since you are familiar with about:config, is dom.event.clipboardevents.enabled still set to its default value of true?

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Thank you. No, the value is, and presumably has been for some time, false since I have not (knowingly) altered it. Re-setting it to true was not included in sugarmac's suggestions I have now set it to true and see what happens

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Unfortunately when I closed Firefox to restart it, all the relevant tabs were lost because I had 3 instances of Firefox open in order to compare many tabs simultaneously for a very fiddly database revision from 4 websites with multiple tabs for each. When I eventually get back to testing copy and paste, I shall see if the change suggested made any difference.


As a aside, it would be useful if the setting to remember and reinstate the tabs actually did just that, and not do a significantly different subset. Some of the tabs were opened a couple of weeks ago so reconstructing that Firefox instance is a major piece of work.

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Use the History menu to recover closed windows:

  • "3-bar" menu button > History > Recently Closed Windows
  • "Library" toolbar button > History > Recently Closed Windows
  • (menu bar) History > Recently Closed Windows

Use the Exit command to avoid windows closing in the wrong order (they all get reopened):

  • menu button > Exit
  • (menu bar) File > Exit

I don't suggest setting the preference to true since that can cause problems in scripted editors.