why won't copy and paste work?

[Krista_McGruder]

Seriously Confluence? Copy and paste does not work??? Seriously!!!

[Shannon S · Accepted solution]

Hi Krista,

My apologies for the frustration you're experiencing regarding this. We will require more information, as @Marianne Miller mentioned. I can confirm that copy and paste works as expected in my Confluence installation by default.

There's no reason I can tell why it shouldn't be working. The commands are CTRL+C (Copy) and CTRL+P (Paste) on Windows, and CMD+C/CMD+P if you're on a Mac.

Here are a few things to consider:

1. Are you having the issue with a specific web browser? If you've only tested with one browser, such as Internet Explorer or Edge, it might help to test it on another one. This rules out an issue with your browser itself. Other browsers you can test include Firefox or Chrome, and Safari on MacOS.
2. Do you have any extensions in your browser? If so, please try disabling all 3rd-party browser extensions. You can also test this using Incognito Mode.
3. Are you able to replicate this from multiple devices, and multiple networks?
4. Is everyone else in your organization experiencing the same issue?
5. Is your Confluence admin aware of your issue? If you have not yet spoken to your Confluence admin about this, I would recommend doing so. There's only so much we're able to help with remotely, and something like copy/paste is usually a local issue and can be resolved by your local admin. If your administrator confirms it's a bug with your Confluence installation, then please have them raise a support ticket with us.

Thank you for your help here, and I'm so sorry for the difficulty caused.

Regards,

Shannon

[Kostya Kostyushko]

I'm having the same issue.

Ubuntu 20.04
Chrome Version 94.0.4606.81 (Official Build) (64-bit)

It worked well before, I noticed this problem a month ago or something, and it still exists.

[Éva Kovács]

Same here with Ubuntu and Chrome. I noticed it also around September and since then.

[Seff P.]

Having the same issue on Ubuntu 20 +  Brave v96 in Confluence and JIRA Cloud platform. The issue is intermittent, and simply restarting the web browser fix it (at least for that session)

[Bernardo Reis]

I'm having the same issue with Ubuntu and chrome. It does not seem to happen on my Mac, for some reason, but unfortunately, Ubuntu is what I use most of the time for work. 

This issue is a bit disruptive and it is a bit frustrating that it's been opened more than a year ago with no fix so far.

[Esteban Torres]

So it seems it is indeed an Ubuntu thing... Ubuntu 20.04 and Chrome... this is pretty annoying as it is very hit and miss. Sometimes it works and most times it doesn't...

[Alexis Vanier]

Same situation here, occasonally but frequently unable to copy and paste.

`Ubuntu 20.04.3`

`Version 97.0.4692.99 (Official Build) (64-bit)`

[Ilya Yakushev]

Same issue here:

Ubuntu 20.04.3

Chrome Version 96.0.4664.93 (Official Build) (64-bit)

[Nic Brough _Adaptavist_]

I'm sorry, but it's the same answer - what are you doing differently to the people who do not have a problem with it?

[Manoel Stilpen]

Issue created in 2020 and many people still have this problem :o  

I'm facing the same problem on ubuntu 20.4 and chrome. It's totally frustating a simple copy and paste doesnt work!!!!

[Ilya Yakushev]

Happened again today so I jumped to see there were any updates.

Specifically while I was copy-pasting info from a PDF. At the beginning everything was copy-pasted successfully and suddenly it stopped pasting.

@Nic Brough _Adaptavist_ it seems that the common thing between everyone here is that we use Unbuntu.

[Nic Brough _Adaptavist_]

Yep, there's patterns there, but that is now telling us it's some people on Chrome on Ubuntu. 

And what is the difference between those of us who do not get the problem and those that do.  90% of my browsing is from a Ubuntu-based machine, and 95% of it on Chrome.  I have never seen this.  

Until you can do that, there's pretty much nothing you can do.  You don't even know it is a problem with Confluence.  The stories here are actually pointing to "chrome on ubuntu" being the problem, not Confluence.

[Elle Gerard]

I use Macbook with Firefox and have trouble pasting some content in specific macros within confluence. There 100% is a copy/paste defect in confluence.

[Ilya Yakushev]

@Nic Brough _Adaptavist_ I'm sorry, should I further invest my time in investigating Atlassian's bugs? Maybe even apply for a QA position? /s

I'm genuinely happy for you that you haven't encountered this bug, but for those of us who did it's darn frustrating. As paying customers, we don't need excuses for not prioritizing bugs, we need solutions. 

Nevertheless, thank you for helping me start looking into alternatives!

[Nic Brough _Adaptavist_]

Have you tried reporting it as a bug to them?  Last time it was, three years ago, it turned out to be a fault in the browser.

[Nic Brough _Adaptavist_]

Hi @Krista_McGruder 

@Marianne Miller started the way I want to - I'm very sorry you're having problems with it. But as she said, we're a bit stuck without more information on what is not working.

I've been writing four Confluence pages today (well, more, but most are child pages), all of which need content that I've copied and pasted from other systems. The stuff from another (older) Confluence was pasted perfectly, the bits from Word and Google docs were mostly ok except where people had used the more obscure formatting options, and the one from the other wiki lost headings and functions (as expected, but it retained the formatting, so going back and applying Confluence headings to it was 10 minutes work).  The stuff I needed from Sharepoint, I gave up on, it's more like a care home for retired documents than an active system in my experience.

So our question here sounds simple - what does "does not work" mean? Ok, that's oversimplification, but to help you, we need to know the symptoms, not the generalisation.

An analogy here is medical - a doctor cannot do a lot with "I don't feel well", they need to know symptoms. So do we - could you describe what you are copying, what happens when you paste it into Confluence and what you expected Confluence to do with the pasted data?

The other question is about versions.  It's not hugely important, but it would be good to know which range you are in - less than 4.0, 7.0 or higher, or a version between those two points.

[Marianne Miller]

Sorry you're having so much trouble.  Confluence does allow cut and paste, but we need to figure out why it's not working for you.    It would be helpful to understand more about what you are trying to do...  What are you creating in confluence?  What kind of content/page is it?What are you copying from?  Are you working in Cloud or server?

If we can look into these details, I'm sure we can work this out.

best,

Marianne Miller

[Krista_McGruder]

I am working in server.

Don't know what version and now allowed to see with my current rights.

Copy and paste does not work. I have to upload everything as an image and try and insert. I can't even copy and paste images that are on the templates given to us by...Confluence.

Our firm has made the likely grievous decision to build intranet sites in Confluence instead of SharePoint. I have to build quite a complicated parent and child pages  and populate with content. The tools I have are clearly insufficient for this job; I am shocked by how little functionality Confluence has versus our standard-issue and pretty creaky version of SharePoint. 

But given Repi's snide comments, am sure this is the position Atlassian takes toward its customers (they are stuck with it so what do we at Atlassian care?) and it seems I have to live with it.

[repi]

Dear Krista, you seem to be confusing something. I am not an Atlassian employee who oversees customers. I am a private user of Confluence, who uses it for private purposes and also pays the license privately. For several years I was an administrator for Confluence in a company environment. Now I'm in the pensioner and use the part privately.
But somebody who works with Confluence professionally and has little knowledge and apparently does not get any support from his company, I have not come across my administrator role in all the years.

This is a user community and not Atlassian's support!

[Kay Rhodes]

@Krista_McGruder& @Shannon S 

paste not working seems to be a symptom of the clipboard containing formatted content that Confluence doesn't want to handle.

For example, copy text from an html page with colored formatting (maybe some syntax highlighted source code) and attempt to paste and it will flat out refuse. Paste that same content into a text editor that supports some formatting (i went with TextEdit on the mac) and then copy it from there and try to paste THAT into confluence. That works for me.

This is, of course, a terrible solution as it destroys the look of what you were trying to paste, but it at least lets you paste something without having to retype it all.

the real bug here is that confluence [edit: or maybe the browser?] doesn't bother to tell you that it's refusing to paste and no errors are put to the console. Thus it appears to be intentionally refusing to take your clipboard content and not telling you anything about why.

[Elle Gerard]

I am currently having a copy/paste issue in a page properties macro. I want to copy text from a table column to a new row in the same column. I place my cursor in the column/row that I want to paste and use command + v (the default shortcut keys for pasting on mac). the text pastes, but not in the location I want. The Confluence system is pasting a new table in the page properties report with  a single row and column. The system is not pasting where i want the content to go. This has been a new issue. I first saw it a month or so ago.

I can copy/paste in other areas of pages, but I cannot copy/paste in a page properties macro table. In my many years of working with Atlassian products, I've never seen this issue.

Playing around with this a bit, pasting only works correctly in my scenario if the whole cell in the page properties table is selected (as indicated by the cell being highlighted in blue). I have no idea how to do this by default, but it appeared to happen automatically after selecting right click paste. The text was still pasted in a new table below, the cell I wanted the text to be pasted in was highlighted in blue. When I selected right click > paste again, the text was pasted correctly.

I have not found a way to get pasting to work as I expect it to with simply using shortcut keys cmd + v.

[repi]

You seem pretty new to Confluence.
You lack the most basic knowledge.
Is there no training in your company?
The Confluence is a really powerful tool and easy-to-use application once you have gotten used to it.
However, the same applies here, the error is usually 60 cm in front of the screen.

[Darline Auguste]

Hi @repi - please remember that, as part of the Atlassian Community, you agree to treat others with kindness and respect. The rest of the guidelines can also be found here: https://community.atlassian.com/t5/custom/page/page-id/rules-of-engagement.