This site will have limited functionality while we undergo maintenance to improve your experience. If an article doesn't solve your issue and you want to ask a question, we have our support community waiting to help you at @FirefoxSupport on Twitter and/r/firefox on Reddit.

Search Support

Avoid support scams. We will never ask you to call or text a phone number or share personal information. Please report suspicious activity using the “Report Abuse” option.

Learn More

Message editor bug: Ctrl-Z and Ctrl-Y not working

  • 11 replies
  • 3 have this problem
  • 10 views
  • Last reply by Henrik R.

more options

Hi!

I am writing a reply, where I am inserting a lot from Word-documents and web-pages. When I pressed Ctrl-Z, a large block of text, including an inserted quote, disappeared, and when I pressed Ctrl-Y it did NOT reappear, so there must be a bug or two in the message editor. I am not sure what else to tell about it, but it's kind of shocking.

I have noticed before, that when you use Ctrl-Z and Ctrl-Y the editor-window does not scroll up and down to show you WHERE you are undoing/redoing something. That is also quite confusing!

And BTW: When you mark something, there is no cursor, to tell you if you are at the end of one line or at the beginning of the next. That is also quite annoying.

Best regards, Henrik R.

Hi! I am writing a reply, where I am inserting a lot from Word-documents and web-pages. When I pressed Ctrl-Z, a large block of text, including an inserted quote, disappeared, and when I pressed Ctrl-Y it did NOT reappear, so there must be a bug or two in the message editor. I am not sure what else to tell about it, but it's kind of shocking. I have noticed before, that when you use Ctrl-Z and Ctrl-Y the editor-window does not scroll up and down to show you WHERE you are undoing/redoing something. That is also quite confusing! And BTW: When you mark something, there is no cursor, to tell you if you are at the end of one line or at the beginning of the next. That is also quite annoying. Best regards, Henrik R.

All Replies (11)

more options

Paste /undo /redo worked fine for me. The cursor was there IF you pressed up or down -key.

more options

Has no-one else experienced this bug?? Should it be posted elsewhere in a bug-reporting-system, and not here?

more options

Hang on.

Please tell us what you expect ctrl+y and ctrl+z to do.

Where I come from, ctrl+y = redo ctrl+z = undo

So if your last action was to paste, ctrl+z would reverse the paste. The pasted text would go.

Ctrl+y would do nothing as there is no selected text to un-paste.

I don't think it's doing anything wrong.

more options

Zenos said

Please tell us what you expect ctrl+y and ctrl+z to do. Where I come from, ctrl+y = redo ctrl+z = undo So if your last action was to paste, ctrl+z would reverse the paste. The pasted text would go. Ctrl+y would do nothing as there is no selected text to un-paste. I don't think it's doing anything wrong.

I don't think Ctrl-Y should work the way you say. I have never experienced an editor that works in that way! First I pressed Ctrl-Z to undo the last part I had written, but instead a large block disappeared, so immediately I pressed Ctrl-Y to restore that block, but nothing happened. That MUST be a bug (or 2) in the message-editor. The editor I am using right now, to write this message, also works the way I expect, and NOT the way you describe!

more options

Just read microsofts description of Windows short-cuts What's amazing is that you can undo/redo several steps, just click undo/redo again.

Modified by Gnospen

more options

Gnospen said

Just read microsofts description of Windows short-cuts What's amazing is that you can undo/redo several steps, just click undo/redo again.

What on Earth does THAT have to do with anything ????? Please don't post a reply, if you don't understand the subject at hand!

more options

When you insert your word document are you using Paste without formatting (Ctrl+Shift+V).

All bets are off if your pasting the horribly contaminated data from a Microsoft office document without using a text only filter. It is an unfortunate fact of life that an email containing text pasted from Microsoft word can cause a virus alert due to it's internal references to OCX controls.

It also contains complex data structures that are only meaningful to Microsoft office. However they are more than enough to scramble other editors as they often do not form valid HTML. Just another occurrence of Microsoft "innovating"

more options

Matt said

When you insert your word document are you using Paste without formatting (Ctrl+Shift+V). All bets are off if your pasting the horribly contaminated data from a Microsoft office document without using a text only filter. It is an unfortunate fact of life that an email containing text pasted from Microsoft word can cause a virus alert due to it's internal references to OCX controls. It also contains complex data structures that are only meaningful to Microsoft office. However they are more than enough to scramble other editors as they often do not form valid HTML. Just another occurrence of Microsoft "innovating"

That's probably the problem!

It is not the first time I experience problems because Microsoft doesn't care about standards made by anyone but themselves...!!

If MS had to pay us for all the time we have wasted because their software doesn't work properly and because they don't care about the standards that existed before them, then Bill Gates would not be one of the richest men on Earth, but one of the poorest...! :-)

more options

Matt said

When you insert your Word document are you using Paste without formatting (Ctrl+Shift+V)? All bets are off if you're pasting the horribly contaminated data from a Microsoft Office document without using a text only filter! ...

Do you know if there are any of these problems with copying from Open Office documents?

more options

Paste is always something of a lottery. But OpenOffice and LibreOffice have not raised any particular issues I am aware of. My own experience is not all that useful as I don't tend to paste from word processors or spreadsheets.

Personally I use LibreOffice

more options

Matt said

Paste is always something of a lottery. But OpenOffice and LibreOffice have not raised any particular issues I am aware of. My own experience is not all that useful as I don't tend to paste from word processors or spreadsheets. Personally I use LibreOffice

I think it would be a great improvement, if TB could detect 'bad' Clipboard-blocks from MS Office etc., and either warn the user or clean up the block before it is Pasted/inserted!