[Issue] Unable to Copy/Paste after a while

[Hagar Delest]

Hi, I was wondering if anyone could help me with this problem:

I use Open Office every day. I normally open several Windows at the same time (Calc, Writer) and I have to Copy/Paste a lot. From Browser to Writer, from Writer to InDesign, etc. When I start OO copy/pasting normally works like a charm, but after a while, I can't paste any Text into OO-Writer anymore. It always pastes the last copied text that was in clipboard, no matter what I copy and no matter wether I use hotkeys or do it through the menu. What I normally do is end OO through Task Manager, and restart it again. Then, copy/pasting works again.

It's not a big deal, and I kinda got used to it, but I thought it might be a good suggestion as a possible bugfix.

Does anyone else experience this?
Thanx for your help

Arfa

[John_Ha]

Arfa

It always pastes the last copied text that was in clipboard, no matter what I copy and no matter whether I use hotkeys or do it through the menu

Let me make a prediction - you are running Windows 7 64 bit. Please confirm what you are running, and whether it is 32 bit or 64 bit, as this will help the analysis of the problem.

I have this problem and I have posted it at http://www.oooforum.org/forum/viewtopic ... highlight=

I have also reported it as a bug. It is Issue 110217 called Paste from clipboard pastes the previous contents of the clipboard at http://www.openoffice.org/issues/show_bug.cgi?id=110217

Unfortunately, it cannot be reproduced reliably yet, so it has not been accepted. One other person, also running W7 64 bit, has added his support to my bug report saying he gets it too. Please register and add your comment.

[Arfa]

Hi John

As you can see from my signature, I'm running XP, 32Bit with SP3. Maybe this has nothing to do with the OS since I'm having the exact same problems as stated on your own thread.

Best,

Arfa

[John_Ha]

Arfa

Thank you for responding. That is very interesting because as all the other posts I have seen mention Windows 7.

What I cannot understand is why there isn't an uproar about this. If everyone was having this problem, the forums would be flooded with posts about it, but they aren't. I thought it must be because it only happens to W7 64 bit users, and there are probably only a few of them. But if you are getting it on XP SP3 that means that anyone running XP SP3 should be getting it as well.

I ran XP SP3 up till last November when a lightning strike voltage surge killed the PC and I am pretty sure I never saw it.

[Arfa]

The lack of uproar is interesting indeed, even though I don't think this problem is such a big deal. Could be a weird combination of running software that causes the problem, so only people with that specific configuration could be having the problems. To me, it only happens after a while. Nevertheless, it's definitely a bug worth checking.

[Librarian]

I am unable to paste AT ALL within a Writer document, any writer document: new or one that has a lot of text - nothing shows up at all - not even the last thing on my clipboard. I am unable to paste text from Notepad, Notepad++ or any other program. I use Windows XP and use Google Chrome as my browser but I have given up copying anything from any other program. I do not even see the 'paste' or 'paste special' option in the Edit menu of writer.

I would really, really appreciate some help on this as it is taking up a lot of time since there are things I need to copy from one part of a writer document to another part of the same document. It is maddening, frustrating and wasting my time.

Frankly, I am appalled that this is even an issue, it is inexcusable, as copying and pasting are part of wordprocessing. Furthermore I am appalled that it is not being taken seriously!! Sorry, but I'm not going to be opening the clipboard in a DOS window - I expect this to work like it is supposed to. This is ridiculous.

[Librarian]

Apparently people have had issues with copying text FROM a Writer document into a content-editable <div> on Google Chrome. I found this explanation from one of the Chromium programmers very interesting:

Comment 21 by jianli@chromium.org, Mar 02, 2010
In short, OpenOffice writer does not generate the correct CF_HTML format to put into the clipboard.

According to HTML Clipboard Format (http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms649015(VS.85).aspx), the HTML comments <!--
StartFragment--> and <!--EndFragment--> need to be present in the data:

The fragment should be preceded and followed by the HTML comments <!--StartFragment--> and <!--EndFragment--> (no space allowed
between the !-- and the text) to conveniently indicate where the fragment starts and ends. Thus the start and end of the fragment are
indicated by the presence of these comments and by StartFragment and EndFragment byte counts in the description. Tools are expected to
produce this information. This redundancy has been introduced to be able to rapidly find the start of the fragment (from the byte
count) and mark the position of the fragment directly in the HTML tree.

However, OpenOffice writer does not respect this and produce the HTML format data without the required comments, like the following:

Version:1.0
StartHTML:0000000168
EndHTML:0000000656
StartFragment:0000000591
EndFragment:0000000639
<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN">
<HTML>
<HEAD>
...
</HEAD>
<BODY LANG="en-US" DIR="LTR">
<P STYLE="margin-bottom: 0in"><B>Foo</B></P>
</BODY>
</HTML>

We can rely on StartFragment and EndFragment to find the html text, as a fallback. How do you think?

[John_Ha]

Librarian

You are probably the only person where copy paste does not work for you - it works for every other user of OO. Use some common sense - do you really think OO would be released and happily used by millions and millions of people if copy paste didn't work!!!! If it works OK for millions of others, you need to track down what is different on your PC and no-one else can do that apart from you.

I would say that you probably have something seriously wrong with your installation. You need to do some testing to narrow it down.

Try uninstalling and re-installing OO. Make sure you delete all the profile stuff for your current install, and recreate it all from new just in case it is a corrupted profile causing your problems. In W7, the profile files are at c:\users\FRED\App Data\Roaming\Openoffice\*.* where FRED is your username or check on the OO site to find how to remove your profiles files for your OS.

Try testing it with no other applications running - some 3rd party programs silently monitor the clipboard and mess other applications. You might need to use msconfig to temporarily disable all your startup programs (including firewall and AV software) so tread carefully. AV programs are notorious for doing strange things.

Try testing in Windows Safe Mode to see if it is then OK - this loads a minimum of drivers etc.

Is it OK in Calc or Impress?

Can you paste from Notepad to OO? From OO to Notepad?

My problem (sometimes pastes the previous content of the clipboard) is a unique problem, seen by very few (only about 10 or 20 people worldwide), and probably caused by an extremely obscure timing (race) hazard in OO or in Windows or on our PC hardware.

[John_Ha]

What I normally do is end OO through Task Manager, and restart it again. Then, copy/pasting works again.

Arfa

I seem to have found a simpler workaround. When it is pasting the previous contents, just copy some random text from inside OO - this seems to reset everything and copy paste now works OK again.

[Hagar Delest]

Note that there are several discussions about that. Some have pointed out a problem with 3rd party clipboard managers or some similar applications (mainly keyboard listener IIRC).

[Librarian]

John, the very title of this thread (and others like it) indicates that I am not the only person!

I have seen your replies and even your bug report, so clearly I am not the ONLY person for whom this function does not work. I hope you were kidding when you said that. And yes, I have plenty of common sense.

I have not only uninstalled, but reinstalled, updated and updated any extensions to Writer that were available. In fact, I installed Oo Writer on a clean install of XP. And no, it does not work in any Oo product.

I have tried it with no other programs running except Task Manager which I always have open for obvious reasons. I can see my user data in Documents and Settings/my name/application data/open office.org/3 but I hesitate to delete any or all of that.

I will (yet again) download another copy of the suite and uninstall and reinstall, though I doubt this will make a difference, as it has not before.

[John_Ha]

I have seen your replies and even your bug report

Librarian

You might find using MS clipbrd.exe helps debug things - it is a clipboard viewer which shows what is on the clipboard.

Because the intermittent problem I see occurs with all OO apps, I have raised a further bug report in the OO API (the earlier one was in OO Writer). I am hopeful that it will be looked at by the person responsible for the clipboard handling - it may need transferring to the Framework group.

See "OO does not paste the text contents of the Windows clipboard - instead, it pastes the previous text copied in OO" at http://www.openoffice.org/issues/show_bug.cgi?id=113171.

[Librarian]

I just uninstalled, re-downloaded and reinstalled Oo suite. Still nothing. And just to be clear, I cannot copy or paste anything from even within one part of a Writer document to another part of the same document. The copied text is not even getting put into the clipboard:

In the MS clipbrd.exe, when I copy something from within OO Writer, there is nothing on the clipboard!

I can copy and paste fine within any other program (non Oo) and between other programs. I don't think I have any clipboard listener IIRC on my computer, so I don't think that is it. The fact that it has been brought up to Google Chromium programmers and their response tells me something. The fact that there are several threads and bug reports on this issue tells me something. No one should have to terminate an application through Windows Task Manager and restart it to have a basic functionality work again.

It is also noteworthy that I had the 'intermittent' problem of it pasting the last item from the clipboard into Oo Writer, too - and it has now progressed to the point where it just doesn't function at all.

[John_Ha]

It is also noteworthy that I had the 'intermittent' problem of it pasting the last item from the clipboard into Oo Writer, too - and it has now progressed to the point where it just doesn't function at all.

Librarian

Interesting! I wonder what must have changed to give rise to it going from intermittent to never working?

It might be interesting to backout recent Windows updates to see if it goes back to being intermittent. You can do this either by using System Restore and temporarily going back as early as necessary, or I think you can even uninstall them in Add/Remove Programs.

[Librarian]

Ha! I just did the Windows Update today, so funny you should bring that up. I was on plain Windows XP and jumped up to SP3 today...no difference, unfortunately.

[MikeK]

I have the same problem:
-I copy some text (nothing special, just text I don't want to retype) from Firefox 3.6.12 and paste special (unformatted) into my OOWriter document. Alternate: Paste (not special) from Notepad++.
-Pasting works fine for a while.
-After a while, it quits working fine. By "quits working", I mean that what pastes is the previous thing OOWriter pasted, not what I just copied.
-My other applications (Notepad, Word, whatever) work correctly. By "work correctly", I mean that when I paste I get the text I just copied.

Just adding notes in case it helps with a resolution.

[John_Ha]

MikeK

This is an accepted bug in OOo. You can vote to support getting it fixed here http://www.openoffice.org/issues/show_bug.cgi?id=113171.

[MikeK]

Thanks John.

[amreilly]

I have the very same problem as the OP. Shut down and restart of OO did not resolve the issue. I used the workaround of copy/pasting a new selection from within OO. I found this thread useful http://www.oooforum.org/forum/viewtopic ... highlight=
and I will, as suggested, vote to support getting it fixed here http://www.openoffice.org/issues/show_bug.cgi?id=113171.

Thanks for your help, everyone.