Apache OpenOffice (AOO) Bugzilla – Issue 110217
Paste from clipboard pastes the previous contents of the clipboard
Last modified: 2013-09-10 03:39:29 UTC
I am running OOO320m12 under Windows 7 Home Premium 64 bit version. When I paste into an OO Writer document the previous contents of the clipboard are often pasted, instead of the current contents. It is intermittent, but the following often reproduces it: 1 Start Writer and create a new empty Writer document. Write the word DOG in it 2 Create a new Notepad document. Write the word CAT in it 3 Copy DOG in the Writer document with ctrl/c. Paste the clipboard contents into the Writer document with ctrl/v - it pastes OK and DOG appears. 4 Change focus to Notepad and paste the contents of the clipboard into Notepad with ctrl/v. It pastes OK and DOG appears. 5 Now copy CAT from the Notepad document with ctrl/c. Paste it in Notepad with ctrl/v. It pastes OK and CAT appears, showing the clipboard now contains CAT as expected. Now comes the problem 6 Change focus to the Writer document and press ctrl/v to paste the contents of the clipboard to the Writer document. I expect to see CAT appear, but DOG (the word previously copied in Writer) appears instead. Repeated ctrl/v keeps pasting DOG in the Writer document. This is wrong. 7 Change focus back to Notepad and press ctrl/v. The word CAT appears as expected - the last time I copied anything, I copied CAT. This is OK. The clipboard always seems to have the correct contents, because it pastes correctly into Notepad. But when I paste into Writer, Writer seems to pick up the previous contents of the clipboard. Could it be that Writer is not clearing a buffer from its previous copy? Other points: 1 It is intermittent - sometimes it works properly, sometimes it doesn't. 2 It can also happen when copying between two Writer documents. 3 It can also happen if the first item copied (DOG in 1 above) is an image. 4 I do not have Selection Clipboard enabled in OO 5 I have uninstalled and reinstalled OO and it still happens. Should I remove all my profile stuff as well and do a fresh install? 6 I never saw the problem in XP - it has only appeared since changing to Windows 7. I do not recall which version of OO I was running in XP but it was fully updated when my XP PC died in Nov 2009. 7 I first reported it as http://www.oooforum.org/forum/viewtopic.phtml?t=95978&highlight= and got very few comments. I first noticed it with a Master document but later testing proved that the fault occurs with a standard odt file without a Master document being open. 8 It also happens as reported if I use EDIT > COPY and EDIT > PASTE instead of ctrl/c and ctrl/v 9 I have only noticed the error when I am pasting into Writer. It does not happen when pasting into other applications. It does happen when I copy from other applications like Thunderbird. This does suggest it is Writer causing the problem. I cannot understand why I am getting it and no-one else seems to be getting it! My Windows 7 is a standard installation. I have two users defined on the PC. It would not surprise me if it was something in Windows 7 causing the problem - perhaps the implementation of Clipboard has changed in W7 and OO is not picking it up properly. I am happy to provide files and run suggested diagnostic tests.
Since submitting the report, I have come across these posts http://user.services.openoffice.org/en/forum/viewtopic.php?f=15&t=24973 in the OO Community Forum which describes the same problem. Windows 7 seems to be a common feature of the posts. I also note that searching on clipboard here throws up a few issues including 102232. I do not have Clipboard Manager installed.
I cannot confirm this with OOo 3.2 on Windows7 (with all updates installed). Copy/paste between Notepad/Writer works fine in the above described way.
Let me answer your points. 1 I see that you cannot confirm this, but please note that it is an intermittent problem. 2 My Windows 7 is fully up to date 3 Were you testing with the 64 bit version of Windows 7? I have not (so far) been able to reproduce it on the 32 bit version of Windows 7 and the posts in the Community Forum also seem to suggest that 64 bit is a common factor.
I have two different versions of clip.exe on my PC. It appears as though one is the 32 bit version and the other is the 64 bit version C:\Windows\System32\clip.exe 32kB 14/7/2009 C:\Windows\SysWOW64\clip.exe 26kB 14/7/2009 When I hover over them, both say: File description: Clip - copies data into the clipboard Company: Microsoft Corporation File Version: 6.1.7600.16385 Date created: 14/7/2009 00:25 [SysWOW64 says 00:15] Size: 31.5kB (32) [SysWOW64 says 25.5kB] So, Writer is presumably calling clip.exe, but could there be a subtle difference because one is 32 bit, and works OK in 32 bit W7; while the other is 64 bit, and fails for me in 64 bit W7? I could not locate any exe which suggested it pasted from the clipboard - perhaps clip.exe does all clipboard functions.
Me too! Emphasis on the issue being intermittent. I use Writer 90% of the time, so I haven't noticed it in any of the other components, but this does not mean it doesn't apply to them. The description which opens this bug report is very good. Sometimes I can happily paste again and again from different sources, other times I'm stopped dead by this bug and there is no way for me to paste into my document. I am convinced that somewhere, OOo must have a cache or temporary variable or some sort of buffer which is not being cleared. System specs included: Gateway GT 5058 Desktop | Overal WEI (Windows Experience Index): 4.9 Windows 7 Professional 64bit - all patches. Kaspersky Internet Security 2010 - up to date Processor AMD Athlon(tm) 64 X2 Dual Core Processor 3800+ (WEI 4.9) Memory (RAM) 4.00 GB (WEI 4.9) Graphics NVIDIA GeForce 9600 GT (WEI 6.4) Gaming graphics 2303 MB Total available graphics memory (WEI 6.4) Dual 22" widescreen monitors at 1680x1050 - using DVI duallink cables Primary hard disk 343GB Free (466GB Total) (WEI 5.9)
I have been able to reproduce the problem in Writer, Calc and Impress. I was wondering if it could depend on the number of characters which are copied. I used CAT and DOG as very clear examples in my report, but I get the error with what I am actually copying. I therefore did the following test 1 Open Notepad and create 9 lines of text as below 1 12 123 1234 12345 123456 1234567 12345678 123456789 2 Open writer and write these 9 lines into Writer 3 Start in Writer and copy 123456789. Paste it in Notepad - OK 4 Copy 1 in Notepad, paste in Writer - pastes as 1 OK Copy 123456789 in Writer, copy 12 in Notepad, paste in Writer - pastes 12 OK Repeat for 123, 1234, 12345 etc - all paste OK in Writer 5 Move up a line, copy 123456768 in Writer and paste in Notepad - pastes OK Copy 1 in Notepad, paste in Writer - pastes 1 OK 6 Copy 123456768 in Writer, copy 12 in Notepad, paste in Writer - pastes 12 OK Copy 123456768 in Writer, copy 123 in Notepad, paste in Writer - I get the error and 12345678 is pasted in Writer. Immediately paste again in Writer with ctrl/v and I get 12345678 in Writer - it should be 123. Change focus to Notepad and ctrl/v - 123 is pasted in Notepad, which is correct. 7 Open a Calc sheet and ctrl/v - 12345678 is pasted in Calc. This is wrong. I expect 123 to be pasted, but Calc seems to be getting the previous contents stored in Writer. 8 Open an Impress sheet and ctrl/v into a text box - 12345678 is pasted into Impress. This is wrong. I expect 123 to be pasted, but Impress seems to be getting the previous contents stored in Writer. 9 Change focus to Notepad and ctrl/v - 123 is pasted into Notepad. This is correct as the last time I copied anything, I copied 123. 10 Close all OO sheets. Reopen OO and go back to step 1 - everything is OK and I cannot reproduce the error 11 Close Writer, open Writer, and go back to Step 1 - the error occurs immediately the first time I copy 1 in Notepad - it is pasted as 123456789 in Writer. Conclusions. 1 It appeares to occur with Windows 7 64 bit. 2 The problem is not confined to Writer, but occurs with Writer, Calc and Impress. It does look (to my untutored eye) like OO is picking up what it pastes from a temporary storage areas or buffer instead of from the clipboard. Or that the W7 64 bit clipboard is storing the previous contents, as well as the current contents, and OO is sometimes getting the previous contents instead of the current contents.
The post http://user.services.openoffice.org/en/forum/viewtopic.php?f=15&t=28669&p=131709#p131709 has a user running XP SP3 who also gets this exact problem so it does not look like it only occurs under Windows 7 64 bit. He says "I'm running XP, 32Bit with SP3. Maybe this has nothing to do with the OS since I'm having the exact same problems as stated on your own thread."
The problem is that we cannot handle issues which only happen "sometimes". Try to find a reproducible scenario (together with the XP SP3 user). Find out a detailed manipulation for which the problem always appears. Feel free to reopen then.
Closed
I realise the difficulty in debugging intermittent problems. This is not a Writer problem - it is an OO Interface problem as it appears in Writer, Calc and Impress. However, I would have hoped that someone might have been able to have a quick look at copy / paste code in OO to see whether there is some poor or faulty coding there. It appears that OO is somehow a) storing the previous contents of the clipboard somewhere! Is it a buffer? b) not pasting the current contents of the Windows clipboard, but pasting the wrongly stored data - ie OO is not picking up the current contents of the clipboard. So how is OO picking up the stored data? This looks like it is not a Windows problem, but an OO problem. I have tried to find a way of guaranteeing to reproduce it, but no luck so far.
I have found a way of making the problem reproduceable. You need a clipboard viewer to see what is happening. It is reproduceable using the text and image technique as below but my original report shows how it also happens (less often) when I copy text. XP used to include clipbrd.exe which was a clipboard viewer. It is not supplied with Vista or W7, but it does work on W7. Alternatively, download a similar freebie utility. (Note - the clipboard viewer is not causing the problem. I originally got the problem when I did not have the clipboard viewer on my PC - I only got the clipboard viewer in order to help me analyse the problem after it had occurred.) 1 Open clipbrd.exe - we will use it to see the contents of the clipboard 2 Open an image with an image editor (MS Paint works) and copy the image. Look at clipbrd.exe - it now contains the image. (nb IrfanView is a bit better because IrfanView allows me to past both text and images into it) 3 Open a new Writer file and PASTE - the image is pasted into the document at the cursor position. This is as expected. So we have proved that OO will paste an image from the clipboard at the current cursor position. 4 Close the document. 5 Open a new Writer file and type the words zebra and lion. 6 Highlight zebra, and copy it. Paste it into the document - zebra appears 7 Look at clipbrd.exe - it now contains zebra as expected because the last thing copied was the word zebra 8 Go back to the image editor, select the image and copy it. Paste the image into the image editor - it pastes the image OK. So the clipboard now contains the image. 9 Check clipbrd.exe - note how, as expected, it contains the image. 10 Change focus to OO Writer, and just paste or Ctrl/v. You would expect the contents of the clipboard to be pasted - ie the image - as in Step 3 above, but they are not! Instead, then previous contents of the clipboard which were copied from Writer, namely zebra, is pasted. This is clearly wrong. 11 Return to the image editor and paste or ctrl/v. The image is pasted. So the image editor pastes the CURRENT contents of the clipboard OK, but OO pastes the PREVIOUS contents of the clipboard which Writer itself copied. 11 In Writer, copy lion. Paste into Writer - lion is pasted OK. Paste into another text app (Notepad) and lion is pasted OK. Check clipbrd.exe - it has lion. This is all as expected So the problem looks like at Step 10 Writer (and Calc and Impress) is picking up zebra from an OO Writer buffer which has not been cleared - it is NOT picking up the current contents of the clipboard. I have since done a bit of digging. This mozilla forum entry is interesting - it seems to be the same problem and seems to have been analysed as a race problem. http://netbeans.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=88161 I have reproduced this fault five times in succession by following the written steps exactly as above.
Sorry, I forgot to add that when I repeated the steps above using Thunderbird email client instead of OO Writer, everything worked exactly as expected - ie at Step 10, the image is copied into Thunderbird. This does suggest that it is definitely an OO problem, and is not caused by any of the sofware (MS Paint, clipbrd.exe, Notepad) which I am using to do the testing.
Happens on Windows XP SP3 (32bit) as well. Windows clipboard viewer shows clipboard has been updated with new contents, but OOo always pastes whatever used to be in the clipboard beforehand.
Same root cause as issue 113171. *** This issue has been marked as a duplicate of 113171 ***
Closing duplicate.
i got the same problem with Open Office V4.0.0 running W7 32 bit. i copy some cells and paste them in skype -> ok i now copy the message from skype -> content from cells i copied before are copied. restart of OO brings nothing. rebooting of machine is no workaround