Search Support

Avoid support scams. We will never ask you to call or text a phone number or share personal information. Please report suspicious activity using the “Report Abuse” option.

Learn More

Copy pasting text from an external application into Reddit.com comment box on Firefox entirely messes up formatting

more options

Hi. When copy-pasting text with formatting (bold, italics, spacing) into any Reddit.com comment submission box (not post submission boxes) from any external text application (Microsoft Word, Google Docs, Pastebin) using Firefox (v88.0.1), all formatting is lost and seemingly random newlines are added. Instead of lines going from the entire space left to right, they are cut off in the center where newlines are added.

The text tends to look like this. And any bold and italic portions are removed. (Intended)

The text tends to look like this. And any bold and italic portions are removed. (Resulting)

When trying to delete this text and copy-paste additional times, ghost text appears that cannot be deleted but overlays on top of any additional text. Removing any parts of text seems to paste another copy and infinitely loop more of the pasted text, creating a horrible looking overlay of text that now looks like cryptic symbols because of the overlaying.

I posted and looked through Reddit's /r/help, and it seems that multiple people are reporting this issue, all using the latest version of Firefox and having the issue appear in the last few days.

I have already tried disabling extensions, launching in Safe Mode, clearing Firefox cache, manually troubleshooting settings in about:config, looking through all entries of about:support, refreshing the Firefox profile, completely reinstalling Firefox. The issue does not appear to be my installation, but rather a bug with the software on this version.

Any help is appreciated, I am totally stumped.

Hi. When copy-pasting text with formatting (bold, italics, spacing) into any Reddit.com comment submission box (not post submission boxes) from any external text application (Microsoft Word, Google Docs, Pastebin) using Firefox (v88.0.1), all formatting is lost and seemingly random newlines are added. Instead of lines going from the entire space left to right, they are cut off in the center where newlines are added. The text tends to look like this. And any '''bold '''and ''italic ''portions are removed. (Intended) The text tends to look like this. And any bold and italic portions are removed. (Resulting) When trying to delete this text and copy-paste additional times, ghost text appears that cannot be deleted but overlays on top of any additional text. Removing any parts of text seems to paste another copy and infinitely loop more of the pasted text, creating a horrible looking overlay of text that now looks like cryptic symbols because of the overlaying. I posted and looked through Reddit's /r/help, and it seems that multiple people are reporting this issue, all using the latest version of Firefox and having the issue appear in the last few days. I have already tried disabling extensions, launching in Safe Mode, clearing Firefox cache, manually troubleshooting settings in about:config, looking through all entries of about:support, refreshing the Firefox profile, '''completely '''reinstalling Firefox. The issue does not appear to be my installation, but rather a bug with the software on this version. Any help is appreciated, I am totally stumped.

All Replies (1)

more options

Hi DT, another user mentioned this yesterday. That thread isn't solved, but for comparison/commiseration:

https://support.mozilla.org/questions/1336127

If you don't need the formatting, you could try using Ctrl+Shift+V to paste as plain text and see whether that makes any difference. (Especially when pasting from MS Word, due to its weird HTML.)