Copy Paste problem after installing VirtualBox 5.2.6

[blegh_enduser]

It's hard to imagine what the VirtualBox bug would be that causes this change. You say that you can successfully copy from a plain text editor to the clipboard and the host sees it. Well, that proves that VirtualBox is still detecting CF_TEXT availability and passing it to the host. If you no longer can paste text from Word2016 then the only explanation I can think of is that Word2016 no longer offers CF_TEXT - so the change must be in Word, not in VirtualBox.

I would agree with that... but I was literally performing an ongoing daily workflow copy/pasting from the results of an automated workflow involving email and MSWORD when I decided to go ahead and upgrade Virtualbox while a few folks were talking to me in the office. I upgraded to 5.2.6, immediately installed the guest additions, rebooted the Guest VM once more, went back to my workflow, and it stopped working. There were no updates from Microsoft installed during this process.

What is the "guest text editor" that accepts pastes from Word2016? Is this third party, or is it Microsoft's own latest Notepad? (i.e. Word2016-aware notepad).

I have been flipping back and forth using Notepad ++ on the Guest and very recently (yesterday) a nifty little background app called Ditto to attempt to shorten the added copy/paste step to get it into the OSX host clipboard. However this question did prompt me to look at my workflow more closely and try a few more things. I discovered that it is not MSOFFICE anything so much as it is HTML formatted text that will not make it to the host clipboard. So.. the problem is not as bad as I thought, but it still is a change from previous behavior and am now looking at adding a step into my workflow that I have been using for more than a year. Alas... it is progress, though now I am bummed that I can't copy/paste from guest web browsers and it show up on the host clipboard.

[socratis]

it still is a change from previous behavior

I'm running the danger of being repetitive and boring, but... that change addressed a crash. If you have a case to be made, that your workflow is more important than a crash, by all means head to the ticket and let the developers know.

[andyp73]

I think there is an argument that could be made that questions whether the fix that was made to resolve the crash is the correct way to have fixed that issue if, as a side effect, it removes functionality that used to be there. As a developer on commercial embedded projects I have had code rejected at both peer review and QA time for that reason.

Not ever having looked at that area of the VirtualBox code I am not in a position to say whether that is a valid argument in this case or what other potential resolutions to the crash issue there might have been.

-Andy.

[Ezsra]

I am also having issues copying text from my guest to my Mac Host. This has been going on for a while. Upgrades did not help and reinstalling the guest additions did not help.

VB Version: Version 5.2.8 r121009 (Qt5.6.3)
OS X Version: 10.13.4 (17E199)

I read where folks are worried about formatted text copying but honestly I just want plain text and that does not work either. I even tried copying from notepad in the guest with no success. I am considering downgrading as other have mentioned.

I hope a solution is provided soon as I used this feature all the time and am considering other options moving away from VirtualBox.

- Ezsra

[erdeslawe]

Using VirtualBox 5.2.8 r1 12009 and Copying/Pasting plain text from Guests (Windows) applications to Host (MacOS 10.3.4) applications works with no problem for me. Nor do I recall having experienced any similar problem with earlier VirtualBox releases, so it's clearly not a universal problem; and there must be something different about any Mac systems/installations affected.