Word 2004 clears clipboard from Firefox on launch

[NotarySojac]

I have seen a post from earlier this year asking a very similar
question to this, but it had no real follow-up:
http://groups.google.com/group/micr...21b6?lnk=gst&q=paste&rnum=28#967d78b3fb7f21b6

This is reproducible on both our MacBook Pros.
Open a web page in Firefox. Select some text - sentence, paragraph or
all (does not matter).
Go to the Finder and select Show Clipboard to reassure oneself that
there is something on the clipboard.
Launch Word 2004.
Click in the new document and try to select Paste from the Edit menu.
We cannot - it is greyed out. Apple-V does nothing either.
Go back to the Finder and Show Clipboard. It is now empty.
Go back to Firefox and copy the same thing again.
Switch back to Word and now you can paste it.

We can copy text from Safari or TextEdit, then launch Word and paste
successfully, but not from Firefox.

My MacBook Pro is running MacOS 10.4.10 fully updated. My wife's is at
10.4.9.
My Firefox is 2.0.0.6. My wife is at 2.0.0.5.
We both have MS Word 11.3.5.
We are nt aware of any custom macros running in our copies of Word.

Other than remembering to launch Word before copying, has anyone else
(besides davidwb) seen this and can anyone offer a real solution?

 

[Elliott Roper]

Hmm. Interesting. You have very clearly described the steps to
reproduce the problem. When I follow them exactly, the paste works for
me.
It is hard to think of an explanation for why Firefox's clipboard copy
has been singled out by Word for that treatment. Clipboards are often
more complicated than they look, with more than one version/format of
the copied material, so it is still possible that a macro in Word is
cleaning out the clipboard created by Firefox.

Try renaming ~/Documents/Microsoft User Data/Normal while Word is not
running. Start Word, create a document, quit Word and note that there
has been a new copy of Normal created.

Now repeat your copy, start Word, fail-to-paste procedure.

I suggest this because your Normal might have got modified by a Word
document you imported from elsewhere.

It would also be useful to try narrowing down the scope of the problem.
Can the clipboard be preserved when it contains very small samples of
very plain text from Firefox? What if you copy something from Firefox's

view source display?

 

[JE McGimpsey]

This is reproducible on both our MacBook Pros.
Open a web page in Firefox. Select some text - sentence, paragraph or
all (does not matter).
Go to the Finder and select Show Clipboard to reassure oneself that
there is something on the clipboard.
Launch Word 2004.
Click in the new document and try to select Paste from the Edit menu.
We cannot - it is greyed out. Apple-V does nothing either.
Go back to the Finder and Show Clipboard. It is now empty.
Go back to Firefox and copy the same thing again.
Switch back to Word and now you can paste it.

Your steps work fine for me - even with all my startup macros (none of
which affect the clipboard), I can paste fine.

In addition to Elliott's suggestion re: the Normal template, are you
loading any other add-ins/global templates (via Tools/Templates and
Addins...) or have other files in your startup folder? If so, try
disabling/moving them.

The only other thing I can think of (and I may be talking out of the
wrong orifice here) is that it's a problem with starting up Rosetta. To
check this, try starting Excel, or another PPC app (which would be
better, since it would eliminate the common Office components), then
running your test.

 

[John McGhie]

This is indeed astonishingly complicated, because much of the time, the
clipboard does not actually contain the text, simply a link to the location
of the text in memory.

If you try this with an Active Server Page, chances are that when you
"Paste" Word follows the link and triggers a refresh of the page. Which
fails because the browser did not request it.

That's wild speculation on my part: Which website URI are you using?

Cheers

Hmm. Interesting. You have very clearly described the steps to
reproduce the problem. When I follow them exactly, the paste works for
me.
It is hard to think of an explanation for why Firefox's clipboard copy
has been singled out by Word for that treatment. Clipboards are often
more complicated than they look, with more than one version/format of
the copied material, so it is still possible that a macro in Word is
cleaning out the clipboard created by Firefox.

Try renaming ~/Documents/Microsoft User Data/Normal while Word is not
running. Start Word, create a document, quit Word and note that there
has been a new copy of Normal created.

Now repeat your copy, start Word, fail-to-paste procedure.

I suggest this because your Normal might have got modified by a Word
document you imported from elsewhere.

It would also be useful to try narrowing down the scope of the problem.
Can the clipboard be preserved when it contains very small samples of
very plain text from Firefox? What if you copy something from Firefox's

view source display?

http://groups.google.com/group/microsoft.public.mac.office.word/browse_thread>>
/
thread/3c88f180c0b26b54/967d78b3fb7f21b6?lnk=gst&q=paste&rnum=28#967d78b3fb7f>>
2

--
Don't wait for your answer, click here: http://www.word.mvps.org/

Please reply in the group. Please do NOT email me unless I ask you to.

John McGhie, Consultant Technical Writer
McGhie Information Engineering Pty Ltd
http://jgmcghie.fastmail.com.au/
Sydney, Australia. S33°53'34.20 E151°14'54.50
+61 4 1209 1410, mailto:[email protected]

 

[CyberTaz]

Hi John -

I'm on a PPC G5 and have been noticing "similar" behavior - at least from
the standpoint of Word being unable to paste even though the content is
clearly on the clipboard. In some cases the Word Paste icon is dimmed, in
others it is active but pasting by any technique causes Word to go into a
tailspin requiring a Force Quit.

Try an experiment for me if you will, as it seems to vary from one site to
another...

Go to wikipedia.com - English language home page,
Select All & copy,
Launch Word & paste

I'd be interested in your results

 

[John McGhie]

Hi Bob:

Interesting: That page beachballs Word 2004 if you try it from Safari.

If you simply "paste", it works. If you Edit>Paste Special>RTF Formatted...
Beachball!!

That's in 10.4.10 on a Macintel Macbook...

Cheers

Hi John -

I'm on a PPC G5 and have been noticing "similar" behavior - at least from
the standpoint of Word being unable to paste even though the content is
clearly on the clipboard. In some cases the Word Paste icon is dimmed, in
others it is active but pasting by any technique causes Word to go into a
tailspin requiring a Force Quit.

Try an experiment for me if you will, as it seems to vary from one site to
another...

Go to wikipedia.com - English language home page,
Select All & copy,
Launch Word & paste

I'd be interested in your results

--
Don't wait for your answer, click here: http://www.word.mvps.org/

Please reply in the group. Please do NOT email me unless I ask you to.

John McGhie, Consultant Technical Writer
McGhie Information Engineering Pty Ltd
http://jgmcghie.fastmail.com.au/
Sydney, Australia. S33°53'34.20 E151°14'54.50
+61 4 1209 1410, mailto:[email protected]

 

[NotarySojac]

Sorry for not responding to all these suggestions - I was expecting a
email alert when my original post was replied to as in most forums,
but evidently not. My UseNet chops have gotten very stale over the
years...

We have no macros, templates or add-ins other than what Office
installs on its own.

We have tried copying full pages, one paragraph, one sentence, even
single words. The results are all the same. Our source sites have
ranged from Apple's support forums to MacFixit to LiveJournal. I just
went to www.wikipedia.com, selected all, copied checked the clipboard
(found it full of text), launched Word and found it impossible to
paste. Returning to the Finder shows that I was mistaken - the
clipboard does not get emptied. The field on the bottom now says
"Clipboard contents: unknown" and I am unable to paste into any other
application after launching Word. If I return to Firefox and again
copy the contents of the page at wikipedia.com I can paste it into any
other application and but not Word. If I select just a sentence or the
url in the address field, and copy I can paste it into Word.

If something happened to the default template it is very odd that it
happened on both our MacBook Pros. Deleting the Normal template file
does not change Word's behaviour. Copying & pasting from page source
is also not successful after a Word launch.

Launching Excel renders the contents of the clipboard "unknown" just
like launching Word does.

Launching Illustrator CS2 does not do anything to the clipboard, so it
is probably not Rosetta's doing - though it did remind me of how long
it took to launch any of the Adobe PPC apps and why shelling out for
CS3 was so worthwhite...

I just made a new user on my Mac and the results are the same.

 

[John McGhie]

Sorry, we can't solve your problem

But we CAN give you email alerts The Microsoft groups website at
http://www.microsoft.com/communities/newsgroups/list/en-us/default.aspx?dg=m
icrosoft.public.mac.office.word&cat=en_us_30958a27-876b-44c9-acb5-1b17814921
93&lang=en&cr=us

Will give you email alerts if you login. It's the world's slowest,
nastiest, most confusing user interface imaginable, but it is very powerful
once you get to know it

There is a replacement on the way, but it's still in beta...

Cheers

Sorry for not responding to all these suggestions - I was expecting a
email alert when my original post was replied to as in most forums,
but evidently not. My UseNet chops have gotten very stale over the
years...

We have no macros, templates or add-ins other than what Office
installs on its own.

We have tried copying full pages, one paragraph, one sentence, even
single words. The results are all the same. Our source sites have
ranged from Apple's support forums to MacFixit to LiveJournal. I just
went to www.wikipedia.com, selected all, copied checked the clipboard
(found it full of text), launched Word and found it impossible to
paste. Returning to the Finder shows that I was mistaken - the
clipboard does not get emptied. The field on the bottom now says
"Clipboard contents: unknown" and I am unable to paste into any other
application after launching Word. If I return to Firefox and again
copy the contents of the page at wikipedia.com I can paste it into any
other application and but not Word. If I select just a sentence or the
url in the address field, and copy I can paste it into Word.

If something happened to the default template it is very odd that it
happened on both our MacBook Pros. Deleting the Normal template file
does not change Word's behaviour. Copying & pasting from page source
is also not successful after a Word launch.

Launching Excel renders the contents of the clipboard "unknown" just
like launching Word does.

Launching Illustrator CS2 does not do anything to the clipboard, so it
is probably not Rosetta's doing - though it did remind me of how long
it took to launch any of the Adobe PPC apps and why shelling out for
CS3 was so worthwhite...

I just made a new user on my Mac and the results are the same.

--
Don't wait for your answer, click here: http://www.word.mvps.org/

Please reply in the group. Please do NOT email me unless I ask you to.

John McGhie, Consultant Technical Writer
McGhie Information Engineering Pty Ltd
http://jgmcghie.fastmail.com.au/
Sydney, Australia. S33°53'34.20 E151°14'54.50
+61 4 1209 1410, mailto:[email protected]