Windows 7 Eating Paste

gremlinkurst

Extraordinary Member
When I use my mouse within some applications to perform a text-based Paste operation, the contents of the clipboard do not get copied into the desired location¹; before posting this I verified A) that the clipboard does have the data that's supposed to be there, and B) that the Paste operation is successful within OTHER applications. The Paste operation itself, however, seems to be the problem, not the mouse; the failures still occur when I don't use the mouse, but use the keyboard to navigate forms/data fields, and data insertion is commanded by CTL+V. The failures happen, for example, when I try to paste a path for an exported format in an icon editor, paste a key into a product activation/registration field, or a password into a login box in a browser (but the paste operation executes is I try to paste data into the browser's address bar). This described behavior is not consistent, so it thus defies isolation via experimentation. Something is interfering with my Paste operations; something is eating my Paste commands, but not the data I want to paste. So far this has not happened with image-/screenshot-based Paste actions, just when I try to place alphanumeric strings with either a context menu mouse selection or keyboard command (CTL+V).

I'm wondering about something ELSE that happens within a browser while I'm manually entering data into a text field (possibly related): I use a plug 'n' play (no firmware) Dell multimedia keyboard with standard English layout, so it does not have keys with characters like é … ü (I just entered those characters using ALT+Numpad keystrokes, but when I tried to enter a « [ALT+174], this browser window redirected, placing a left-facing arrow in the address bar. Thank Murphy the browser remembered all the characters I'd typed before submitting {it doesn't always}). Although I am literal in multiple languages, I have not installed multilingual support, English being the only keyboard layout, I have permitted Windows updates vis-à-vis Russian and Spanish language packs, just in case I want to use a different input method. I find it most convenient, however, to enter the non-English special characters using ALT+Numpad key combinations. The involuntary browser redirects are not predictable.

¹What happens looks like what you'd expect when you try to paste a screenshot or an image section (CTL+C/CTL+X) into a data field that expects an alphanumeric data type (I've caught myself doing this before; the result is a little BLIP! with nothing else).
 
Family emergency. I've tried emailing you but don't know if it's a good address.
 
The problem is not with the pasting, it's with what you are trying to paste into. For security and data integrity purposes, "forms" (anything where you enter information into a box), often contain controls on what can be entered and how. Sometimes, they will not allow pasting. Sometimes, they will reject entries that don't comply with what the form expects. Sometimes, they will edit your input to extract the portion needed. There can also be other things at work. For example, you copy what looks like a hyperlink but what goes into the clipboard is a long string of characters hiding behind the display name. When you paste that, it may not behave as you would expect.
 
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