Cannot paste from Guest Windows 7 to Host Mac

[SMXSteve]

So I guess all the copying and pasting we did before the updates was our imagination. And we know you have nothing to do so we like to waste our time posting bogus questions on the forum.

It used to work and now it doesn't.

[socratis]

Does the number 15782 mean anything? Copying pasting works with its known limitations:

• Copy plain text from TextEdit, paste to WordPad/Notepad? Yes.
• Copy rich text from TextEdit, paste to WordPad/Notepad? Yes, plain text.
• Copy rich text from Firefox, paste to WordPad/Notepad? Yes, plain text.
• Copy URL from Firefox/Safari, paste to Firefox/IE? Yes.

• Copy plain text from Notepad, paste to TextEdit/LibreOffice? Yes.
• Copy rich text from WordPad, paste to TextEdit/LibreOffice? Yes, plain text.
• Copy rich text from Firefox, paste to TextEdit/LibreOffice? Yes, plain text.
• Copy URL from Firefox/IE, paste to Firefox/Safari? Yes.

Try the above, see if anything doesn't work as expected. The only non-default program is Firefox in the guest/host, so you could skip those.

I don't know what you were seeing, but it's easy enough to downgrade and see it again. And if a bug gets fixed, you got to accept that fact, not want to bring your bug back.

You could also ask for an improvement about rich text sharing, but I wouldn't hold my breath. There are way more bigger irons in the fire...

[SMXSteve]

No it doesn't

To repeat what has already been said, Copy from a Word document (or any application as well like Outlook) in Windows 7 guest to a Safari web application textbox on a Mac host or any application on the Mac as far as that goes used to work. Or just copying a URL from IE to Safari or back.
Before 5.2.2 it worked. Every version since then it has not (latest I tried was 5.2.6).

So I just downgraded one of my computers to 5.1.32 - IT WORKS.
It has always worked until 5.2.2.

The problem is it's a process that some of us do often. Having to paste into Notepad doubles the amount of time and effort.

[socratis]

I don't have Word, and I don't plan to.
The clipboard was always intended to be text-only. Anything more is/was a bonus.
I don't really know what your workflow is. But if it's that important to you stick with 5.1.32.
A bug was fixed (a crash). This changed the clipboard behavior. You're not seriously suggesting to re-introduce a crash just because it disrupts your workflow, do you?

I think I've said enough on the problem. If you want, file a ticket asking for the crash to be re-introduced.

[TonyRockyTiger]

I am here to add to the drum beating. I upgraded to 5.2.6 on my Mac OSX host running a Windows 10 guest and lost the ability to copy text from MS Outlook in the guest to the host. I have had to downgrade to 5.1.32 to get this functionality back.

Socratis, no one is suggesting that the copy functionality be brought back with the crash bug. We would just like to have the feature that was present before brought back, hopefully in a way that doesn't cause other issues, such as the crash you reference. I believe most people don't care about full rich-text: the behavior was to paste the rich-text as normal text into the Mac OSX host (at least for my use-case).

[socratis]

I hear you. But did you notice that all the problems are with Microsoft's products? I didn't have such a problem with LibreOffice. Try it out...

If you don't have a clipboard viewer, get a free one, like "Free Clipboard Viewer". Now, copy something from a failing application in the guest, and tell me what available options you have. Something formatted is preferable like "Bold, italic, underlined".

BTW, copying the above formatted text from WordPad works (even though it's an MS product )... Plain text, but it does.

[Paul_S]

I am here to add to the drum beating. I upgraded to 5.2.6 on my Mac OSX host running a Windows 10 guest and lost the ability to copy text from MS Outlook in the guest to the host. I have had to downgrade to 5.1.32 to get this functionality back.

Socratis, no one is suggesting that the copy functionality be brought back with the crash bug. We would just like to have the feature that was present before brought back, hopefully in a way that doesn't cause other issues, such as the crash you reference. I believe most people don't care about full rich-text: the behavior was to paste the rich-text as normal text into the Mac OSX host (at least for my use-case).

Same with me - upgrading to 5.2.6 stopped the copying from MS Outlook to OSX host. Downgraded to 5.1.32 to bring it back working.

[amk]

I would like to add another hit of this issue. Notepad must be doing something specific in order to accept the plain-text alternative of the data various applications have placed to the clipboard.
Copying from Notepad then puts only text-plain format to the clipboard and that can get out of the guest directly.

Apparently, previously the Guest Additions were doing something similar to Notepad and selected/converted the clipboard contents to plain-text every time when the host requested clipboard data.
If this process caused a crash in some scenarios, then it is good that a fix was made. Unfortunately the fix caused collateral damage.

It looks like it is limited to Word, and Outlook seems to provide to clipboard also Word object. Instead of "Clipboard viewer" I used Paste Special in Word to see how many different formats are present in the clipboard. In my case, when copying from Outlook there are 6 options: MS Word object, RTF formatted test, Unformatted text, Picture, HTML text and Unformatted Unicode text. GA should take the unformatted text, but somehow it does not. Could it be that the presence of HTML text breaks the pasting to host?

Wordpad puts similar selection: Wordpad object, RTF formatted, Unformatted, Picture, Unformatted Unicode. Pasting to the host works directly.

I now have a Notepad window always open and learned to switch to it and press CtrlV CtrlA CtrlX before pasting to the host or other guest. For the record, copying from Notepad presents only Unformatted and Unformatted unicode in the Paste special menu.

[socratis]

• Try LibreOffice's copy/paste. See what you get.
• Ask yourself "why is it only two MS products are having this issue?".
• And finally, try to download a little freeware program called "Free Clipboard Viewer". Try the portable zip version, the easiest to use.

[Paul_S]

Will this ever be corrected/Changed back as it used to be so we can freely copy from Windows to our OSX Host?

[frimp]

I installed a small utility called PureText. It installs as a Tray icon, you just click it before you change to the OSX host and the clipboard content gets converted to plaintext.
Yes, it's another mouseclick but better than using the Notepad-way.

The best thing however would be to add a clickbox into Vbox "Use plaintext clipboard".

[TonyRockyTiger]

Everyone,

I submitted a ticket so that hopefully a dev can pick it up and address:

https://www.virtualbox.org/ticket/17959

... note that within the ticket I detail that this behavior is also an issue with Chrome and Firefox within the guest, not just MS products.

[ChipMcK]

this post has an intriguing comment

• Re: No copy + paste between host and guest possible

[socratis]

I submitted a ticket so that hopefully a dev can pick it up and address

Actually? No...
What you've done is to submit another duplicate. See #15782, #15960 and #16242.

The problem started (although it was reported later) with the behavior described in #16242 (crash when copying rich-text) and was fixed with #15782, by disabling rich text copy/paste.

What you and #15960 are describing is the lost functionality. I'll take lost functionality over a crash any day of the week...

[TonyRockyTiger]

Socratis, fair enough. How do I submit a feature request ticket to bring back the lost functionality? The original ticket that my ticket duped hasn't been updated in 2 years. As seen by commenters on this and other threads, this is something people would like to have. It would also free you up from having to keep answering these same questions, as we know your time is valuable.