Firefox Cut & Paste: 1 Bug, 4 Years, No Solution!

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I love competition in the market just as much as the other guy. I’m comfortable with IE7, Opera, FF, and if the need be, Safari.
For the most part, I use Firefox nightly for general web browsing, and IE7 for forums and blogs. However, invariably, without fail, every single time a I install Firefox, within a month I am forced to either format or use IE7/Opera instead. This has been going on ever since I started using "Firefox" 3 years ago.

The Bug? No longer being able to cut and paste. AFAIK (from my programming experience), cut and paste is a simple API, you tell it what to copy and the PC does the rest. So imagine my frustration whet every single install of Firefox goes senile on me, and starts to forget to copy every now and then. It continues to get worse.

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For the first month or so, Firefox runs perfect, when I tell it to copy, it copies; and when I don’t, it doesn’t. But before I know it, when I select text and attempt to copy (either ctrl+c, or right-click -> copy, or Edit -> Copy), instead of copying it empties the clipboard. I close Firefox, open Word, ReGet, IE, or something just to find out that my clipboard is empty. Thank God for Firefox’s "Go" menu and its list of recent sites, but that’s quite besides the point…

I don’t normally bug non-reproducibles. There really is no point IMO since they rarely are acted upon. But today I was posting something, then decided to cut and paste it into IE to use ieSpell.. *poof* it was gone. A page disappeared in a world of zeroes and ones. Enough is enough, I went to bugzilla to post it, then on instinct did a search… And I couldn’t believe my eyes! Over 20 separate reports, the first of which was posted in March 2002!! That bug report alone had over 60 comments and complaints, coming in steady for four years! Yet even now there is no solution. It exists in all builds, stable or otherwise, nightly, hourly, and more. 

I have taken this particular bug on as my mission. If I have the time, I’ll go through the source, but I think the best way to help is to bring it to attention. Firefox cannot expect to beat the competition without seriously thinking about 4 year old bug reports with no solutions and constant complaints and feedback.

Please help making the world of internet browsers and the competition between them a better place! Link to this post, vote the bug on bugzilla, check out the code, seed and digg the story!

*UPDATE*
A fix is now available! Please see our post here for details and download links to a good version of Firefox, courtesy of NeoSmart Technologies!

138 thoughts on “Firefox Cut & Paste: 1 Bug, 4 Years, No Solution!”

  1. There just aren’t enough people experiencing it to make it a priority, I’m guessing. As a developer, I can tell you that bugs are never fixed in the order they are submitted, and I’m not surprised this one has been basically ignored since I’ve never heard of it. Maybe you should grab the code and investigate it on your own. This is the kind of thing that’s extremely difficult to fix without being able to reproduce it, so it might actually be easy to see what the problem is once it’s broken on your machine.

    Also, have you tried copying your entire FF profile to another machine once it’s broken? If that causes the problem to migrate as well, a copy of that profile might help a great deal in tracking it down. I might even give it look myself.

  2. I actually switched from Mozilla to Firefox because the version of Mozilla I was on at the time had a copy and paste bug where neither worked after you first started Mozilla.  Once you got something in your clipboard from elsewhere while Mozilla was running, however, then it was OK.  I have noticed the Firefox bug as well, but it shows up a lot less often.  Tempted to switch to Opera next…

  3. yea ive noticed this problem on some older machines but has never actually happened to my own. specifcally, it happened to my old roomate repeatedly. his computer is about 6 or 7 years old. i was never able to give the problem proper diagnosis but funny, i wouldve never guessed firefox was the cause.

  4. Please don’t argue for the bug to be fixed due to its age. There are lots of old bugs that are difficult to fix. The things that help a bug to be fixed quickly are (in no particular order):It can be reproduced every time by following a consistent series of steps and these steps can be followed by a developer and also reproduce the bug for them.It causes devestating damage (e.g. browser crashes) leaving a stack trace that can be given to a developer.It has security implications.There is a patch attached fixing the bug that doesn’t cause side effects.Bugs that are highly interimitant and seemingly don’t have a consitent pattern often go unfixed. I’ve suffered the problem you are complaining about but I have never found a pattern for when it happens AND it happens so rarely I am not willing to put any effort into trying to debug it.Please don’t start a campaign on bugzilla bugs in this fashion – it doesn’t help get the bug fixed it only generates a lot of friction. If you can find the exact steps that anybody can do that cause this to happen every time then that will help far far more.

  5. Hmm I needed to post that comment twice (firefox 1.5) in order to get it to be sent and the line breaking I had in it appears to have gone awry. Sorry about that.

  6. This could be caused by some other application that runs at the same time and locks the clipboard but fails to release it. I can at least imagine how such situation can be created using Windows API. I dont know how this works on Linux though.

  7. I have been running firefox for about a year and have had no problem like this ever, and never heard of it either  

  8. Had this happen to me on Mac OS X several too times.Too many to count.pre 1.0 branch1.0 branch1.5 branchI don’t know what causes it, but it sure is maddening.I’m not sure if I’ve ever had it happen to me on Windows, but at least not for a while (although I change builds every other week, which may affect the occurence as well).

  9. If you’re using Remote Desktop (RDP), on either Windows or Linux, you will find that copy paste breaks a lot – especially on windows. This is a known windows bug.With regards to Linux the default behaviour, when using X, is that the X server only requests the selected data when its pasted because of its content negotiation schema. This means that if you copy something, close Firefox and then try and paste, it won’t work.These could be the cause of your phantom bug.

  10. Take a look at Thunderbird and it’s never arriving integration with address book in OS X.. Hundreds of dollars of bounties has been made and still no progress. :(

  11. Thanks for bringing this up. I’ve had the exact same problem on every single version of FF i’ve installed. –Name withheld in case of fanboy lynchmob.

  12. Thank you! I’m not the only one with this problem that crops up every so often. I have yet to find out what triggers this to happen with copy and paste in FF. It is annoying though, espically when you accidentally copy and paste a huge block of text that you had in clipboard instead of that URL you copied from another website in FF!Windows XP SP2 with nothing out of the ordinary and not a noob when it comes to such things.

  13. It’s definitely not your imagination. I’d never seen it until six months ago, now it does it on two different computers.

  15. Yup – this one’s a killer.  Has had me SEVERAL times.  Incidentally, what plugins do you have running?  It all started for me when I discovered plugins, customisation etc.  My list:- DOM inspector- Talkback- Forecastfox- Auto Copy (ahhh… Old version 0.6.2… This one perhaps?)- Adblock- Tabbrowser preferences- Customize Google- Fasterfox- IETab- Adblock FiltersetG updater- Colorful tabs- Viamatic foxpose- Searchstatus- Greasemonkey- Tab mix plus

  16. PS. I would have claimed this issue but in reverse. I have lots of problems coping from IE. not firefox.

  17. I think this bug mainly occurs when you leave some text selected in a tab in firefox somewhere. If you deselect the text then copy and paste will work as expected. I thought it was down to eclipse but its definately a problem with firefox which is why i switched to opera!!

    J

  18. I’ve seen this in Mozilla suite but it was related to the web page content. It could take several tries till I select a small enough section that Mozilla would correctly select and save to the clipbpard.

  19. I get the same issue from time to time – it straight up forgets how to copy & paste. And then there’s the one when whenever you type ‘ in an input box it goes straight to the find bar…..

  20. That is happening for me as well, on the latest stable release. So I guess the bug is still there.

  21. I’ve had the same problem with Firefox installations on 2 out of my 3 computers.  It’s not a big deal, but can be very irritating, and is the sort of basic issue you’d think would be worth sorting.

  22. I can reproduce the bug with these steps:Open up a new firefox process.Go to http://digg.comSelect "create a small home". Ctrl-CGo to Address field (eveything should get selected)Hit Ctrl-V, it pastesHit Ctrl-Z. Undo.Hit Ctrl-A. Select allHit Ctrl-C, nothing gets copiedHit Ctrl-V, nothing gets insertedHit Ctrl-V, nothing gets inserted againRelease Ctrl between every press.

  23. I know exactly what you’re talking about! This bug is bugging me since I installed FF and I know from at least two friends who have the same problem now and then. Sometimes it works flawless and – especially when you don’t expect it of course – it fails.Some sort of "workaround" I use for now is to use "Cut" instead of "Copy" in the location edit box immediately followed by a "Paste" to see if it was successful – if not I’ll press "Ctrl Z" (on Windows this is) for undoing the cut and repeat the whole procedure. At worst it works on the 3rd round! :DOr I’ll simply do a "Copy" at least three times in a row – especially when I have selected some text in a page. (so basically pressing "Ctrl-C" for a few seconds to be sure ;o)Nevertheless this bug is of such a kind that it really is driving me crazy and gives me the creeps from time to time!!!
    This is on FF 1.5 (and now 1.5.0.1) under WinXP – even after a clean install without any other weird apps/drivers running and it also happens on my Sony Vaio which has totally different hardware and on my other desktop with again totally different hardware and some more apps running in the background. Sometimes the clipboard is emptied (as described in this blog) and sometimes it simply still contains the data it had previously.

  24. Its not a problem with firefox itself. It affects firefox. This type of issue is hard indeed to reproduce. I had the same one with internet explorer. I could not copy-paste an info from my desktop to a database running in internet explorer that i could access via remote connection. Sometimes it was working, sometimes not. I had to close my remote access, copy, then reopen my access and paste. it was the only work around I came with. I only was affected by this issue.

  25. hey ive had this problem. it comes up ocassionallyi thought it must be something wrong with the OS.god, so it is a firefox bug

  26. Drag over text to copy with left button. Leave it highlit.
    Go to another screen.
    Place cursor over window where you want pasted text to appear.
    Click middle button.

    This works in *all* GUI applications.

  29. Can’t say I have this problem at all.  Both Windows (ewww) and Linux environment.  If that were the case, I’d be reloading or frustrated at almost ever computer I’ve worked on.  Havn’t seen the problem at all.

  30. I’ve seen this happen a lot when there is a Remote Desktop window open, but I blame Remote Desktop/Windows for that. Especially since I see the same happen sometimes in other programs when there is a Remote Desktop window open. It could also be that copy/paste is implemented in a quirky way in windows, it would not surprise me.

  31. I’m with you on this one, had the bug for about 6 months now, driving me mad and indeed driving me to opera :((

  32. OH MY I have this bug too, on every computer I own (work, home, laptop). Must be some application I always install that doesn’t work well with Firefox. It even affects copy-paste in other applications, for example, when I get the bug in Firefox, sometimes my text-editor (Ultraedit) craps out too, making copy-paste "local" so I cant copy stuff out of the editor or into the editor.

  33. For the past 3 months I’ve been going mad about this, it is very frustrating and occurs on both my laptop and office PC. My colleagues also suffer from the same problem, on a total of 10 separate systems.

  34. This happens to me ALL the time in FireFox.  It’s the one thing that pisses me off to no end about Firefox.  Try to copy a URL and paste it into an e-mail, and NOTHING HAPPENS.  This has happened in every build I’ve ever used, and I typically only install the release builds.   I can’t believe I have to go to IE, do the same Google search, then copy the URL to paste into an e-mail.   Come on, 4 years and this simple yet incredibly annoying bug still isn’t fixed?

  35. All the people saying "it has never happened to me" are lucky.  I run 1.5.0.1 at home and at work (different hardware but both are versions of XP), and it happens to me in both places.  I can usually copy if I right-click and choose copy from the mouse, although sometimes I have to do it several times to for it to work.  CTRL-C almost never works.  What’s even more frustrating is CTRL-X does delete the text, but does not actually copy it to the clipboard.  I’ve used Firefox/Mozilla since early days, but I have to say, this is close to driving back to IE.  The copy failure occurs whether I’m copying text within the browser or the URL.

  36. Yep, it has happened on EVERY install I have ever had of firefox. It certainly not a "non-reproducable" bug. In fact, it just happened again about 2 minutes, which prompted me to search for a solution. Hence I am commenting on this website. Why won’t it just work already!

  39. I get this all the time.. drives me crazy.  One thing I have found to help is either by closing 1-2 tabs or even opening up 1-2 new tabs, it will start to work again. I do have a RDP window open on my computer the whole time at work, that might have something to do with it. The copy to notepad then back into Firefox works as well for me.

  40. just an update.. had the cut and paste thing happen right now, I closed RDP and I was able to cut and paste again with no problem. Opened RDP back up and it was still working. Looks like after some time RDP will cause the issue. 

  41. Cut and paste just stopped working for me in FF 1.5.0.1, I did the following; Upgraded to 1.5.0.2 Edited my user.js file etc Deactivated smart clipboard in MS word. Reinstalled FF Rebooted computer Installed AllowClipboard Helper Restarted FF in safe mode. NOTHING WORKED .. use right click menu copy, use main menu copy, use ctr-C, ctr-X ABSOLUTELY NOTHING I TRY WILL GET FF TO COPY TO THE CLIPBOARD ! 

  42. I suffer with this cut paste problem. i don’t know if it is coincidence or not but i am also not able to customise my tool bar. I wanted to see if using the cut paste buttons on the tool bar helped but found i could not drag the buttons to the tool bar! has anybody else noticed this problem?? Pete 

  46. Have the same cut and paste problem even after upgrading to 1.5.0.4 under XP Pro. Very annoying and might make me switch to another browser …

  47. obviously, if you haven’t seen the bug, then it can’t exist.

    that’s American logic.

    I just had it happen to me and it’s extremely frustrating because it renders the form and web accessability completely useless for several hours. It seems to work days later sometimes, and is DAMN HARD to reproduce at times. I’ve seen others reproduce it and I know it can be.

    This one I was on collarme.com and it refused to allow me to paste into a form box, just 20 minutes ago.

    Anyone wants to come sit here by my keyboard and watch me try to reproduce it is welcome, but if any developers need me to do screenshots or whatnot, I can do that.

    It’s just I know that not one of them will ask me. They haven’t even worked on the problem.

    D

  49. This bug has NOT BEEN FIXED.

    I don’t have pushow, and the new Firefox doesn’t fix the problem.

    For me, cut/paste seldom works via ctrl-c/ctrl-v, but does work if you use the menu EDIT selections for Cut and Paste.

    I get hit with this bug every day, and I’m really getting sick of it.