Could you explain the steps to replicate the problem? For example if I:

• select some text
• right-click > Copy
• paste into Firefox's Search Bar (or a form in a page like this one)

that works on Windows 7. Are you blocked from copying and pasting even within Firefox, or is the problem between applications?

Also, if it works on some sites and not others, there may be workarounds for that.

Thanks for the quick reply. That procedure works on my XP computer. Testing further, I see that most applications do accept the paste and also show that it is available in a context menu. So far the only application that doesn't show an active Paste item is Word 97, which I use because it is faster than newer word processors and its hyperlink insertion is smarter and easier to use. I'm guessing that the new copy to scrap is using some (relatively) new switch that coincidentally conflicts with how my old Word understands the scrap. I'm going to test some more applications, including newer versions of Word and Open/LibreOffice. If I don't find any other applications with this problem then I can't expect it to get resolved.

Other users have mentioned a problem with copy'n'paste to Word 97 from Firefox 44.0. Go figure a 19 yo application from the last decade just doesn't work right any longer. What the hell is the world coming to?

Firefox 44 reduced the number of formats it puts on the clipboard or makes available in drag-and-drop. There is a good chance that some non-Unicode formats will be restored in a later version because it turns out there are more "legacy" applications in use among users than was envisioned during beta testing. However, it's too soon to know exactly when such a change might be made (i.e., in Firefox 45 or later vs. an update to Firefox 44).

To jscher2000-- thank you for such a concise and coherent answer. I want to continue to use Word 97 for the reasons I mentioned, My workaround is to paste into some other application, such as emacs or notepad, and copy-paste that into Word 97. It is a minor inconvenience but I would appreciate a return to the previous situation. I did not find this problem with any other application, including some rather old ones.

I had an old "Portable Firefox 41" on my computer, so I compared that with Firefox 44. There is a difference, but the tools I have at hand are too crude to understand the change. What I saw was that the "plain text" that Firefox 41 placed on the clipboard was visible to Word 2010, but the "plain text" that Firefox 44 placed on the clipboard was not. Or my Clipboard Inspector program (from 2006) is incorrect about the plain text being there. For what it's worth, screen shots.

Hi Orca11, could you check something:

In Word 97, try using Edit > Paste Special to display any other formats that Word sees on the clipboard. If Word grays Paste Special, that would indicate that it can't use any of the formats on the clipboard. I attached the screen shots from Word 2010 showing that the traditional "Unformatted Text" choice is missing, but two others should be available. What I don't remember is whether Word 97 can use either of those.

Hi jscher2k-- Paste special is gray. You got me curious about what might be going on in the clipboard so I wrote a console-mode Win32 program to enumerate the formats resulting from FF copy. Under FF 44.0 and 43.0.4, I copied the URL of this page and used my program to inspect the clipboard. Both cases show the same set of formats but they are in a different order. This is not due to my program, which just displays what the function EnumClipboardFormats gives it.

Under FF 44.0 See: clipboard.exe version 2016.01.29 There are currently 6 formats in the clipboard. They are: 49161 (0xC009) 13 (CF_UNICODETEXT) 49171 (0xC013) 16 (CF_LOCALE) 1 (CF_TEXT) 7 (CF_OEMTEXT) The CF_TEXT is: https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/1106918

Under FF 43.0.4 clipboard.exe version 2016.01.29 There are currently 6 formats in the clipboard. They are: 49161 (0xC009) 13 (CF_UNICODETEXT) 1 (CF_TEXT) 49171 (0xC013) 16 (CF_LOCALE) 7 (CF_OEMTEXT) The CF_TEXT is: https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/1106918

Hmm, puzzling. Maybe it's something about how the Office clipboard interacts with the standard Windows clipboard, if Word 97 had the stacking clipboard that let you recovery multiple layers of cuts/copies.

jscher2000 said

Hmm, puzzling. Maybe it's something about how the Office clipboard interacts with the standard Windows clipboard, if Word 97 had the stacking clipboard that let you recovery multiple layers of cuts/copies.

This is crippling to me. I need this feature for editing my websites. Please let us know if and when this will be fixed.

Hi Patzilla, it could be several weeks.

Word 97 is not the best HTML editor, but I can appreciate that it may be one of the easiest to use and of course already paid for. Are you open to upgrading to something different/free?

As a short term workaround, you can paste into an intermediate application that better understands modern formatting, then reselect the pasted content and paste it into Word 97. For example, you could try the LibreOffice suite's Writer application (it's free).

https://www.libreoffice.org/discover/writer/

So if you keep the intermediate document open, you click in that document, Ctrl+v, Ctrl+a, Ctrl+x to paste, select all, cut, then switch to Word 97 and paste in the desired location.

Hi Patzilla: I understand the concern, as I also have good reasons for continuing to use Word 97. I'm finding the intermediate application workaround not too terrible but I would not recommend Libre because it is pretty big and slow to open. I'm working in Windows XP and W7 and find that Notepad works fine as the intermediate. Emacs is also working for me. It is a bit slower to start but it is my preferred programming editor and is usually already open.

The change which caused Firefox 44 not to copy in a format that Word 97 can paste is scheduled to be undone in Firefox 45, due out in about 4 weeks. Until then, the workaround continues to be pasting into an intermediate application, selecting the pasted content there, cutting, and then pasting into Word. Unless someone comes up with something better in the meantime.

Since they dropped the most basic clipboard format - plain text (1, CF_TEXT) the simplest solution is to reinstall FFX version 43.0.4 which does support the plain text clipboard format. (It's here https://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/firefox/releases/43.0.4/)

I can't imagine what they saved by deleting this unless someone didn't have anything to do.

FF 45.0 corrects the problem. Many thanks to FF developers for listening and responding.