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?

[Deleted user]

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.

[Matt]

RE: Fault in the browser?

Only Jira and Confluence products have this problem on Linux. For every other website, web application and desktop app in the world, copy and paste is working just fine.

RE: What does not work?

Test on Ubuntu Linux (with Wayland, or Ubuntu Unity, I suggest) and the latest Chrome browser.

Copy from any text field (description, a draft comment, a summary field) on one Jira ticket web page, and paste into another Jira ticket web page (e.g. into a draft comment field). Sometimes it works. Sometimes it does not. Hit refresh (F5) on all the pages and it might work again if you copy and paste again, it might not, but when it does work, it will work only for a while then stops working again.

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist-]

I don't get those problems, using much the same as you (Ubuntu based distro, chrome based browser).  This strongly suggests it's something you've got set up, not a problem with Atlassian Cloud.

[Bernardo Reis]

I have the exact same issues as Matt above. I used JIRA in three different OSs (MacOS, Windows and Ubuntu) and I've tested different browsers (Chrome, Mozilla, Safari) in each. This issue with copy and paste only happens in the Chrome/Ubuntu pair. 

[Michael Nelsen]

Confirmed same issue exists on my machine. Chrome104 + Debian Bookworm.

Can only resolve by hard refreshing the page (ctrl+shift+r).

This issue does not exists on other web pages running in the exact same browser, only on Jira pages for whatever reason. Commonly I have frustrations copying and pasting out of the description field, notes, or really anything on the page once the bug appears.

[Matt]

I'm a software developer.

Linux, the Chrome browser, and perhaps another environmental factor as-yet-unidentified, do appear to be factors that cause this bug in Jira to reveal.

I have seen suggestions that the user's environment is the problem here, rather than Jira. I disagree.

The problem almost certainly resides in Jira's custom JS code or in a JS library it uses. and That is where it can be fixed. The bug is likely to be within the Jira custom code for copy and paste event handling to handle rich text.

It is easy to deduce that the problem is within Jira code because of the fact that we don't have any copy and paste problems with any other apps or websites in Chrome when using the same environment, including other webapps that also do custom JS copy & paste handling. So copy+paste event handling in some vanilla Chrome Linux environments may be slightly different to the web app, but it is certainly not broken.

What we need to do next is to identify the common environment we all have that triggers the bug. We need to make the issue reproducible for the Atlassian developers. Once it is reproducible - it is possible for developers to fix it.

Such an issue impacts many users' productivity, especially power users who blitz around the UI and use copy and paste extensively. Many of these will be Linux users - and most Chrome users - and in some cases they are probably decision makers about the ongoing use of Atlassian products too and this is probably the most serious long-term bug I've encountered with the product suite.

Final thought - and I hate to make this comment, but lets be realistic. Atlassian have not (as far as I am aware) resolved any of the bugfixes or feature requests that I have watched or voted for over the last 7 years - often obvious defects or missing basic functionality (such as the ability to rename groups, or create a ticket with request participants). So my expectations here are low. They may fix it by accident. Hitting F5 constantly on Jira pages, the feeling of frustration, and repeated copy+paste attempts, are part of my muscle memory now when using Jira.

[Jay Cummins]

I have this issue on a Mac Monterey with Chrome and it's been this way since May.

Keyboard Copy/Cut/Paste do not work in Confluence/Bitbucket but does work correctly with other websites. 

The same commands from context menu or top menu work correctly in Monterey/Chrome so that's my workaround.

I've reproduced this on an Incognito w/ no extensions.  Same result with Keyboard Copy/Cut/Paste.  When I do a Keyboard-Paste, there is an interesting behavior: The cursor jumps to beginning of the last line that has characters.

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[Gökhan 'Mete' Ertürk]

I was so frustrated with the issue, I wrote a tiny script as a temporary solution to Copy/ctrl+c not working on Jira.

You can find it on github with the name 'fix-jira-ctrl-c-on-linux'.

Disclaimer: Keep in mind that this uses a bad practice to solve the issue, and is not an official solution either. Don't use it if you don't understand what it does and how.

https://github.com/gokhanmeteerturk/fix-jira-ctrl-c-on-linux

[Darius Valančauskas]

Having same problem, wow it is registered and 2020 and at 2023 still not solved. Really I also havent noticed it in other websites. Also using ubuntu plus chrome.

What you could do is to add at check when user selectes the text,  presses ctrl+c and see if the text is empty in the memory and log it. If so you see it is a bug.

https://stackoverflow.com/questions/6413036/get-current-clipboard-content

Btw why it is marked as solved - it is not solved.

This creates anger.

[Nicolas Depoilly]

I am not able to make a support ticket, but seeing this issue is still not managed years after makes me feel like I must find another software... let s prepare to quit Jira soon!

[Tomasz Paździurek]

Ubuntu (Kubuntu actually) 22.04 here. It just randomly works or doesn't work.

EDIT:

I noticed, most of the time, paste (via mouse right click -> paste or ctrl+v) doesn't work usually when I open subtasks of a task in a new tab.

[Jay Cummins]

I use an external keyboard and have an easily accessible "INSERT" key, so I've been able to consistently paste using SHIFT-INSERT as a workaround.

[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.

[brad_broten]

select grantor, grantee, table_schema, table_name, privilege_type from information_schema.table_privileges where grantee = 'rds_pgaudit'\;
postgres ! rds_pgaudit ! secret ! credit_cards ! INSERT

[brad_broten]

As you can see that pastes fine into this web site.  It will not paste into Jira.

[brad_broten]

And a new one today.  For whatever reason, it will not accept the two = in this string.  If I remove one, it's fine.  Note that even if I put line feeds in, it still hangs.

UPDATE symptoms SET patient='Dilberto' WHERE patient='Dilbert';

Has anyone else tried to paste either of the above strings?  Are you also seeing issues?  Just in case this is some dumb site setting that someone has done peculiar to our Jira setup.

[brad_broten]

(and to hammer it home - again apparently no issues whatsoever pasting it here...)

[Russ Nelson]

The problem, Nic, is that there are no symptoms. Your paste command, whether via the keyboard or via right-click menu, has no effect. No error gets thrown, so it's hard to say what is happening.

[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!

[Cameron Allen]

This is still an issue.  Using Ubuntu 22.04.2 LTS with chrome in incognito

Version 111.0.5563.146 (Official Build) (64-bit) .   

80% of the time copy/paste does not work.  However, when I run into the issue reloading the page 1-3 times usually loads an instance that allows copy paste.  I am constantly copy/pasting things into jira and this is extremely frustrating.  

[Darius Valančauskas]

after reloading jira usually it works. But the load speed of jira is tragic. If it at least would reload in a blink of an eye.

[Russ Nelson]

This has been a problem for years. It is reproducible. Why hasn't it been fixed? This isn't some piece of unsupported open source. This is commercial software for which we pay money. The message here is that Atlassian doesn't want us as customers, and that we should be looking for alternatives. Maybe some unsupported open source might work better?

[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.

[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.

[Russ Nelson]

I tried that. Plain text from a console. It only worked after I refreshed Jira, and then, I was able to paste text with formatting.

[Chi Nguyen Vinh]

I face the same issue Ctrl +V not pasting anything into editing Jira ticket for Chrome & Ubuntu 20.04, this is intermittent. 

Solution: update Chrome to new version + restart Chrome. It works.

[Darius Valančauskas]

Isn't chrome autoupdating? I never manually update it

[Pritesh Mistry]

Something that I have found reproducible for me even after refreshing all the pages described below is from a Jira Epic.

I have created multiple child issues from the epic page. I have then opened these new tickets using middle click from the epic page. I am then forced to the new tab even though I middle clicked to open link in a new tab (I was expecting to remain on my epic tab).

I then proceed to write a description which eventually involves coping text from a formatted confluence page or another Jira ticket which is already open in another window or tab. When I paste using CTRL+V on the child ticket page nothing happens. I then refresh this newly open tab which then allows me to paste.

I also have seen this on tabs that have been left open for a a long time. Opened in the morning via Jira email link or Slack Jira plugin link. I initially thought this related to leaving these tabs open overnight which I have "suspended" my computer. A page refresh usually recovers pasting functionality.

As mentioned above after refreshing the epic page and opening a child issue via middle click again I still see the paste functionality not working even if its the first task undertaken.

Is there perhaps a relationship to opening in a new tab

For Reference I am using Ubuntu 20.04, Chrome 105.0.5195.125

[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.