 |
A project to make businesses more aware of their customer experience, and how to fix it. By Mark Hurst. |
| About Mark Hurst | Mark's Gel Conference | New York Times Story on This Is Broken | Newsletter: Subscribe | RSS Feed |
Search this site:
Categories:
- Advertising
- Current Affairs
- Customer Service
- Fixed
- Food and Drink
- Just for Fun
- Misc
- Not broken
- Place
- Product Design
- Signs
- Travel
- Web/Tech
Previous: Union Station entrance | Main | Next: New Uno card design
April 5, 2004 12:01 AM
Broken: Microsoft Word cut and paste
Phil Terry writes:
You cannot paste into the "Find" window in Microsoft Word.Related post: Microsoft Excel's copy and paste feature.So if you have a word or phrase in a document that you want to find and replace, you have to retype it into the "Find" window. Wouldn't it be simpler if you could:
- highlight the word or phase
- copy it into the clipboard
- paste it into the find windowThis would be easier and ensure that you have the exact match.
I just figured out why this poster thinks you can't paste in the Find window.
What you can't do is paste into the Find window *using the mouse*. None of us ever even thought of this as a problem, since the vast majority of Word users cut, copy, and paste using the keyboard shortcuts, which work fine in every text field of basically every Windows application, including Word's Find box.
However, I just fired up Word and discovered that there is, in fact, no way to paste into the Find dialog with the mouse only. The toolbar greys out when the dialog is displayed, and the text box has no context menu.
However, if not being able to paste by mouse is "broken", so are half of the applications ever made for Windows. The context menu on an editing field is not a standard Windows editing feature; it's an addition to the UI that some applications provide.
Odd, every application I just tested this in, the edit boxes all had context menus. I don't have Word installed at the moment though.
When reporting a bug, it's kind of important to say what version of the software has the bug.
Word 2003 on Windows, for example, doesn't have the context menu, but the Paste shortcut keys (Ctrl+V or Shift+Insert) work. You can also select text and then choose Find, although this only works if the Find box is not already up.
What is broken is that the Find box moves around so that you can see the text that was found. Instead, Word should ensure the document is scrolled to a point where the found text is visible.
Just as an example of a semi-similar app that does this function incredibly well:
In UltraEdit text editor, whatever text you have selected in your document prior to opening the Search or Replace dialogs is automatically pasted in the Find field. Carriage returns and all. I love that feature!
Why would you need to paste? Highlight the text in your document that you wish to find in other locations, and hit CTRL-F. The highlighted text is populated into the Find control. If you do need to paste, CTRL-V works fine.
There are three mechanisms for cut/copy/paste -- the menu, the "right-click" context menu, and teh Control key shortcuts. I certainly wouldn't expect the first to operate in dialog boxes, since dialog box is a separately focused window. Whether it makes sense for the context menu is arguable. In any event, I think the presumption that all methods should work in dialog boxes is probably overkill.
Thanks for all the comments.
A couple of things:
- i use the keyboard shortcuts not the mouse
- i'm using a macintosh, OS 9.1 and Word 98
and:
- copy and paste (by keyboard) generally works in word
- however, it does not work within the find/replace dialogue box
this is one of the many reasons I prefer to use BBEdit.
perhaps it's an artefact of the Macintosh version.
phil
In Word 2003 on WinXP, there is no textbox in the find dialog. It's actually a combobox. Just a slight difference if anyone cares.
Well, I really hate to make it sound like an OS Holy War, but in Linux/Unix, pasting with the mouse works everywhere I've ever tried it. MS makes nothing for the various versions of them, but if I highlight with the mouse, it is automatically copied into the buffer, and just clicking the middle button (3-button mouse) pastes everywhere I've ever tried it. I really miss that when I'm working in other OSes.
No problems either using Ctrl+C then Ctrl+F to insert direct into Find -- or by using the right-click mouse menu and clicking on the Find icon.
The shortcut ctrl + keys for copy, delete, paste (C,X,V) do not work across certain applications (Word in this case).
Our PC just started ignoring the shortcut (ctrl+) commands trying to do a select, copy, paste in the last week or so.
Typically, the problem surfaces when trying to take Word data copied to the clipboard and paste it into the current active browser text window.
Doesn't seem to matter whether one uses IE 5.5 or 6.0 or NS 6.0/7.0 as the result is the same. You can execute the shortcuts from the browser to select, copy and paste to Word for instance, but not from Word to the browser.
The shortcuts work fine otherwise as long as all of the commands are used within the same application. You can do the edit/copy and edit/paste from the drop down box in any screen (app or browser) as a work around, but the shortcut keys only work within the app you are using.
My keyboard hardware checks out fine; - I even reloaded the driver. We have received several updates to SP1 in the last week. I think MS, in its haste to plug many of the known vulnerabilities, has inadvertently wiped out some .DLL's or operating system code.
I run XP (home edition) on a Gateway P4 2Ghz box. Gateway has been no help; - their people don't seem to read plain English very well! I've escalated the problem within Gateway. I also opened a ticket at MS. Will see what MS comes back with.
The problem manifests itself in such away that it appears that there are two different clipboard transient areas instead of one.
FIXED!
With the help of MS Tech Support I corrected the problem by uninstalling and re-installed MS OFFICE 2000. This reset the clipboard and now the shortcut keys work across all applications.
Wasn't too difficult to troubleshoot and fix once I knew where to look and what to touch.
My computer allows me to cut and paste in MS Word, but when I try to copy/cut something from the internet and onto MS Word or another internet page, it won't work.
on a related topic, MS word's dictionary/thesaurus is also broken. for example: "What is contained in the presentation is 15 slides depicting the writing...." or something like that. MS Word green underlined both 'is' and tried to change them to 'are'. example: "What are contained in the presentation are 15 slides depicting the writing..." tell me if this makes any sense and how i can fix it
Microsoft's own little WordPad (not M$WORD2003), knows how to Right-Mouse-click: Cut, Copy, Paste or Delete text in its "Find" window...you tell me? WordPad will display any an all text previously "Highlighted", from its on body of text, upon opening the "Find” Window - while Word2003 can only accomplish one word at a time.
Perhaps the answer or work-around is, for simple text writing/editing, use WordPad, then take it into Word and do what ever formatting is required?
As already stated in the previous chain of posts, you have to use the Ctrl+V or Shift+Insert to pop in the text from the previously copied text. This works find, for me, but if you don’t have arms, fingers, or a table to work on, or your arms are handcuffed behind your back…good luck...!
Microsoft's own little WordPad (not MSWORD2003), knows how to Right-Mouse-click: Cut, Copy, Paste or Delete text in its "Find" window...you tell me? WordPad will display any an all text previously "Highlighted", from its on body of text, upon opening the "Find” Window - while Word2003 can only accomplish one word at a time.
Perhaps the answer or work-around is, for simple text writing/editing, use WordPad, then take it into Word and do what ever formatting is required?
As already stated in the previous chain of posts, you have to use the Ctrl+V or Shift+Insert to pop in the text from the previously copied text. This works find, for me, but if you don’t have arms, fingers, or a table to work on, or your arms are handcuffed behind your back…good luck...!
hi. i need some help here. my ctrl-x and ctrl-z for cut and undo shortcut keys do not work in Word 2003, but work fine with the rest of the components of Office 2003. Actually, this was my problem before when I was still using Office XP. I installed Office 2003 thinking this problem would be fixed but it wasnt.
I hope some could share some tips regarding this. Please email me at supreme_dahon@yahoo.com. thanks so much
I want to second what Karina said on May 30, 2004.
If I try to copy a selection (picture, text, whatever) from an internet web page and then paste it into ANY Microsoft Office 2003 Application, the application stops responding and I have to restart the application, or restart my computer.
I did not have this problem initially. It only developed a few months ago. And I don't know why!
Appreciate any comments, or direction to previous postings.
Thank you.
cut,copy and Paste Does't working in word documents. How to slove this problum?
I want some information about RPc servicess
and what is the main usage of Rpcs?
Tried it for Word XP: does not work
Tried it for Word 2003: does work
in fact you should be able to select a character and have it appear in the Find What field of the find dialog box. it works with every character(s) except symbols such as the paragraph mark.
Alt+0182 works fine.
Microsoft technet claims that the issue existed in Word 2000 and that the workaround was using the Macro template that can be installed. However more than one machine with Word XP also does not allow pasting of the paragraph symbol in the find dialog box. There are no technet articles about this issue in Word XP.
May 4 20005
Using Office 2003: When I try to cut and paste (CTRL C and CTRL V)I end up getting what appears to be a screen dump. Like pressing the ALT and Print Screen button???
I have tried to clear the Clipboard then re-select and it works a few times then reverts back to dumping a screen print with boarders etc.
Anyone know how to fix this-it's driving me crazy
Comments on this entry are closed
Previous: Union Station entrance | Main | Next: New Uno card design
I don't seem to have any trouble whatsoever copying and pasting into MS Word's "find" window...
Posted by: Daniel Drucker at April 4, 2004 11:25 PM