Hello Anton.

First of all, and although possibly not related to your problem, I will remind you that the version of Firefox you are using at the moment as been discontinued and is no longer supported. Furthermore, it has known bugs and security problems. I urge you to update to the latest version of Firefox, for maximum stability, performance, security and usability. You can get it for free, as always, at www.getfirefox.com.

As for your issue, you may be having a problem with some extension or plugin that is hindering your Firefox's normal behavior. Have you tried disabling all add-ons (just to check), to see if Firefox goes back to normal?

It's also possible that you have set some option in Firefox to create this behavior, but let's look at that in due time. First, try the disabling all add-ons.

Thanks Morbus I appreciate you taking the time and effort. It seemed to me very unlikely that an add-on could affect a minor part of a programme that works perfectly and I checked. There is nothing wrong with Firefox 3.6 (the latest) it may just be that it does not have this formatting copy functionality.

To prove this I used an old browser Internet Explorer 5.2 for the Mac - this copies all formatting perfectly although of course it works much more slowly than Firefox and the text before copying reads badly.

Browser companies seem to be interested in video, audio, interaction - and not boring old text formatting. I should point out that Safari 4.0.5 can copy formatting though in a much less flexible way than IE 5.2

Try copying with 3.6 any story off this leading European site - it will copy but not the formatting. If you had Safari you will see there is some improvement and if you have a PC I suspect IE 8 for the PC will do the job perfectly.

http://news.bbc.co.uk

thanks so much for your help maybe you can confirm with the Firefox developers whether this functionality will be included in a future version

best wishes

Anton

Anton.

I copied a random piece of text in that website into OpenOffice.org Writer and it copied all formatting no problem. I'm using Firefox 3.6.3.

I mentioned extensions because I know of at least of one extension that can cause this, when configured by accident to cause it: Copy Plain Text.

In any case, temporarily running Firefox in safe mode to disable all add-ons and see if this persists will give you a clear understanding of whether or not add-ons are the source of your problem.

It is also possible that the medium to where you are pasting your selection copied from Firefox cannot understand Firefox's formating. For example, if you past into Notepad, it will past plain text, without formatting. Where are you pasting this text?

Thanks Morbus - to take your 3 points:

1) I don't have OpenOffice.org Writer I only have Word 2004 and I vcannot afford to upgrade

2) It is into a blank Word 2004 document that I am copying

3) I am a very cautious Mac/Firefox user - I would never import an add-on and the plug-ins I have are all mainstream

The fact is that IE 5.2 copies into Word 2004, Safari 4.0.5 sort of copies into Word 2004 and Firefox 3.6 does not without the sort of application you were using to test it

By the way for some reason when I finished my last online message to you and clicked 'submit' nothing hapened and there was a site message implying your site was down. That maybe was why I received 2 copies of your messages.

thanks again

Anton

Anton.

1. OpenOffice.org is totally free, if you want to use it. I wasn't suggesting you had it, I was just saying it works for me, and so should MS Word.
2. If it works with Safari or other browsers, then it's probably something wrong with your Firefox.
3. Just because an extension is widely used, doesn't mean it can't have problems. Please do try running Firefox in safe-mode to see if the problem persists with all add-ons disabled. Otherwise it because unnecessarily hard for me to suggest a solution.

The site went down for a little bit, I think, but you received two copies of my message probably because I edited it slightly.

EDIT:

Or possibly because I posted two messages :)

Hi Morbus

I was prepared to try your Safe Mode. I entered your URL but it was faulty but I ended up on the one you meant I guess:

http://support.mozilla.com/en-US/kb/Safe Mode

But this instructions is for Windows PCs and there seems to a text fault with it as you can see:

" Close down Firefox completely: At the top of the Firefox window, click the File menu, and select the Exit menu item.Close down Firefox completely: On the menu bar, click the Firefox menu, and select the Quit Firefox menu item.Close down Firefox completely: At the top of the Firefox window, click the File menu, and select the Quit menu item. "

Do you recall I have an Apple Mac OS 10.4.11 ?

Anton

Anton, near the top of support articles, slightly to the right, you can customize which system you have and what info the article will show.

Unfortunately, I don't have a way to give you a link to an article with a specific system already selected, so you have to do that manually. It's the place where it says Show content customized for:

Thanks. I found the Mac OS page BUT which of the disable checkboxes should I tick ?

And am I sure when I restart without holding down the option key that Firefox will come back exactly as it was before entering Safe Mode

I checked out OpenOffice.org and may download that at some future date. Thanks.

By the way I keep getting 2 copies of your messages - no problem - but thought you'd like to know

thanks

Anton

You need to "Disable all add-ons" when entering safe mode. While it's not likely you'll loose your pages, you may want to finish doing anything sensitive before starting in safe mode. Other than that, it's perfectly safe, because you can always go back to normal mode.

I went into Safe Mode and 'disabled all add-ons' and there was absolutely no change whatsover in the problem as I suspected.

Why will you not accept that Firefox 3.6 wotks perfectly - it just cannot copy into a blank Word 2004 document. Have you tried copying into any Word document ?

As a result of this I am going to change my Research browser to Safari 4.0.5 - I prefer Firefox but it is clear that Firefox cannot copy formatting into Word and that is costing me an extra hour to one hour and a quarter every day

I am grateful nevertheless for your help

Anton

Known issue on Mac. https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=79864 - Bug 79864 – Mac style text 'styl' or RTF support for mozilla clipboard

Thank you Cor-el

I should stress this is the first time I have ever used a support site and I am not a very technical person

I have checked out your link re Mac Mozilla issues but it is far too complex and detailed for me to follow.

I should just be grateful if my post was conveyed to the Firefox developer team (assuming that is not you) .

In the meantime I shall have to make my research browser Safari 4.0.5. As I have said above the best broswer for copying formatting to Microsoft Word on the Mac is Internet Explorer 5.2 but it is of course so ancient (and unsupported) that it cannot the display text properly though it can copy it accurately