copy/paste issue between mac and windows 7 vm - hidden chars

[designbymichael]

I've run across what I think is a very rare issue and wondering if anyone out there has also had issues with this or would know of a fix for it.

The issue pertains to copying and pasting text between a Windows 7 VM (specifically characters/text from a form field in IE 9) and into Dreamweaver (CS 5.5) on my Mac. Why do that to begin with? Well, I do all my design and development on my Mac (Mac OS X Lion) and our Content Management System requires the use of IE to edit templates, content and the like.

What I've uncovered is that when I copy and paste text between the Windows VM and my Mac (and vice versa), hidden characters are being carried through and pasted into my target — sometimes visible with ?????'s and odd characters and sometimes invisible ("hidden" spaces between characters that look next to each other, found only by keying through each character with the arrow key and looking for where the cursor stays stationary even though you've pressed the left or right arrow key).

It's really odd and the only thing I can think of is that there must be some difference between the document/text encoding. At any rate, I'm bewildered. Anyone have any answers?