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.

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

Firefox will not copy, will not paste. How do I fix this?

  • 19 replies
  • 36 have this problem
  • 1374 views
  • Last reply by curls

Firefox will not copy/paste within itself from pull-down menu. Will not accept/paste material copied from Mac email, from Word, from Safari. Without copy/paste, the browser is USELESS.

How do I fix this?

Firefox will not copy/paste within itself from pull-down menu. Will not accept/paste material copied from Mac email, from Word, from Safari. Without copy/paste, the browser is USELESS. How do I fix this?

Chosen solution

Problem solved with 44.0.2. Everything is fine, thank you.

Read this answer in context 👍 0

All Replies (19)

Start Firefox in Safe Mode {web Link} by holding down the <Shift>
(Mac Options)
key, and then starting Firefox. Is the problem still there?

While still in Safe Mode,

Type about:support in the address bar and press Enter. Under the main banner, press the button; Copy Text To Clipboard.. Then in the reply box at the bottom of this page, do a right click in the box and select Paste. This will show us your system details. No Personal Information Is Collected.

What stupid nonsense is this?

I want a browser that will work without my having to jump through hoops. If a browser---Firefox in this case---will not simply open, and copy, and paste, without my having to figure out "modes," then it is GARBAGE.

If there is a simple preference adjustment that can be made so that Firefox can work without my having to press a million buttons and go through some rat maze, great. If not, thanks for nothing.

I will add that this babble about "right clicks" is COMPLETELY USELESS if one is dealing with a laptop and a trackpad.

To repeat: Firefox does not copy/paste. It either can, or it can't. Safari can copy/paste using the pulldown menu, but it is not as stable as Firefox.

I would PREFER to use Firefox, if the damn thing can function as a browser should, without a bunch of side-trips for a simple copy/paste function. How do I get that

Before we can fix the problem, we first must find the cause. That means running checks on the program.

Safe Mode is a troubleshooting mode that temporarily turns off hardware acceleration, resets some settings, and disables add-ons (extensions and themes). If the problem goes away, that tells us one thing. If it does not, that tells us something else.

Please follow the instructions I already posted.

Application Basics


Name: Firefox Version: 38.0.5 Build ID: 20150525141253 Update Channel: release User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10.10; rv:38.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/38.0 Multiprocess Windows: 0/1 (default: false)

Crash Reports for the Last 3 Days


All Crash Reports

Extensions


Graphics


Device ID: 0x 166 GPU Accelerated Windows: 1/1 OpenGL (OMTC) Vendor ID: 0x8086 WebGL Renderer: NVIDIA Corporation -- NVIDIA GeForce GT 650M OpenGL Engine windowLayerManagerRemote: true AzureCanvasBackend: quartz AzureContentBackend: quartz AzureFallbackCanvasBackend: none AzureSkiaAccelerated: 0

Important Modified Preferences


accessibility.typeaheadfind.flashBar: 0 browser.cache.disk.capacity: 358400 browser.cache.disk.smart_size.first_run: false browser.cache.disk.smart_size.use_old_max: false browser.cache.frecency_experiment: 1 browser.download.importedFromSqlite: true browser.places.smartBookmarksVersion: 7 browser.sessionstore.upgradeBackup.latestBuildID: 20150525141253 browser.startup.homepage: http://legaleasel.com/ browser.startup.homepage_override.buildID: 20150525141253 browser.startup.homepage_override.mstone: 38.0.5 browser.tabs.loadInBackground: false dom.mozApps.used: true extensions.lastAppVersion: 38.0.5 font.language.group: x-western font.minimum-size.ar: 12 font.minimum-size.el: 12 font.minimum-size.he: 12 font.minimum-size.ja: 12 font.minimum-size.ko: 12 font.minimum-size.th: 12 font.minimum-size.x-armn: 12 font.minimum-size.x-beng: 12 font.minimum-size.x-cans: 12 font.minimum-size.x-cyrillic: 12 font.minimum-size.x-devanagari: 12 font.minimum-size.x-ethi: 12 font.minimum-size.x-geor: 12 font.minimum-size.x-gujr: 12 font.minimum-size.x-guru: 12 font.minimum-size.x-khmr: 12 font.minimum-size.x-knda: 12 font.minimum-size.x-mlym: 12 font.minimum-size.x-orya: 12 font.minimum-size.x-sinh: 12 font.minimum-size.x-tamil: 12 font.minimum-size.x-telu: 12 font.minimum-size.x-tibt: 12 font.minimum-size.x-unicode: 12 font.minimum-size.x-western: 12 font.minimum-size.zh-CN: 12 font.minimum-size.zh-HK: 12 font.minimum-size.zh-TW: 12 font.name.serif.x-western: Times New Roman font.size.variable.x-western: 12 gfx.blacklist.direct2d: 3 media.gmp-gmpopenh264.lastUpdate: 1436532123 media.gmp-gmpopenh264.version: 1.4 media.gmp-manager.buildID: 20150525141253 media.gmp-manager.lastCheck: 1448312361 network.cookie.prefsMigrated: true network.predictor.cleaned-up: true places.database.lastMaintenance: 1448312362 places.history.expiration.transient_current_max_pages: 104858 plugin.disable_full_page_plugin_for_types: application/pdf plugin.importedState: true plugin.state.flip4mac wmv plugin: 0 privacy.sanitize.migrateFx3Prefs: true privacy.sanitize.timeSpan: 4 storage.vacuum.last.index: 1 storage.vacuum.last.places.sqlite: 1447816759

Important Locked Preferences


JavaScript


Incremental GC: true

Accessibility


Activated: false Prevent Accessibility: 0

Library Versions


NSPR Expected minimum version: 4.10.8 Version in use: 4.10.8

NSS Expected minimum version: 3.18.1 Basic ECC Version in use: 3.18.1 Basic ECC

NSSSMIME Expected minimum version: 3.18.1 Basic ECC Version in use: 3.18.1 Basic ECC

NSSSSL Expected minimum version: 3.18.1 Basic ECC Version in use: 3.18.1 Basic ECC

NSSUTIL Expected minimum version: 3.18.1 Version in use: 3.18.1

Experimental Features



I hope this answers your question; there is NO "reply box" at the bottom of the email I was sent.

You are running a very old version of Firefox. Please update. https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/update-firefox-latest-version 42.*

Version 44, the latest I presume is not working with the select > copy, with or without the right click/context menu. Critical in my opinion! Besides that, Firefox is getting painfully slower with every upgrade, much too slow. It's a real shame.

How about checking out v43? Install an older version of Firefox {web link}

Come on, Fred! I came from 43, you're joking, right? The update just get installed so I will have to "update" to the older version to make it work? Is this even a solution? I can't believe how unprofessional this is!!!!!!!!!!! Man!

Does the clipboard only fail when you try to paste content that was placed on the clipboard by other applications?

Did you try to use the keyboard to paste?

It is possible that Firefox isn't recognizing the content that other application place on the clipboard.

When (in what Firefox version) did this stop working? Did it work in previous Firefox versions?

On copy there is no data in the clipboard whatsoever, with the keyboard or right-click > context-menu select "Copy". The problem is not from other application to Firefox, but from Firefox to any application. It doesn't work from Firefox to Firefox either. The funny thing is that it kills the last clipboard data from other applications, like I copied a big zero. I have this since version 44 (two days ago), obviously it worked before, otherwise I wouldn't be so bothered by this. It's a common practice, I noticed it right away.

Copy As Plain Text {web link} Removes formatting from copied text.

Chosen Solution

Problem solved with 44.0.2. Everything is fine, thank you.

New release hasn't solved it for me.

Any copy taken while in FF won't paste to my very old Word 97. (I'll be updating word when I get my new computer and this will remain a backup computer.)

It will paste to Wordpad and to anywhere else. But in Word it shows nothing to paste under the edit menu. It worked fine until the more recent FF releases where I see lots of people with troubles copying and pasting.

leviszekeres said

On copy there is no data in the clipboard whatsoever, with the keyboard or right-click > context-menu select "Copy". The problem is not from other application to Firefox, but from Firefox to any application. It doesn't work from Firefox to Firefox either. The funny thing is that it kills the last clipboard data from other applications, like I copied a big zero. I have this since version 44 (two days ago), obviously it worked before, otherwise I wouldn't be so bothered by this. It's a common practice, I noticed it right away.

This is true for me too. I can copy and paste to Wordpad but not to Word. The edit...paste is faded off in Word, so it's showing nothing in the clipboard. It worked until a recent update.

Hi curls, Firefox 44 to Word 97 is your problem.

Firefox 44 reduced the number of formats it puts on the clipboard, dropping certain legacy formats. After release, several Word 97 users reported that Word 97 could not see any of the formats now available on the clipboard, and they had to use the workaround of pasting into a more modern application first, then cutting and pasting from there into Word 97.

This change will be rolled back in Firefox 45 (next month).

I've been seeing same issue. Usually happens when I restart Firefox or it crashes. Version: 46.0.1 OSX: 10.10

Rebooting the Mac fixes it though.

jscher2000 said

Hi curls, Firefox 44 to Word 97 is your problem. Firefox 44 reduced the number of formats it puts on the clipboard, dropping certain legacy formats. After release, several Word 97 users reported that Word 97 could not see any of the formats now available on the clipboard, and they had to use the workaround of pasting into a more modern application first, then cutting and pasting from there into Word 97. This change will be rolled back in Firefox 45 (next month).

That next release did fix it for me. Meanwhile I'd kept wordpad open, pasted there, then copied again from there and pasted into Word. Your post helped immensely since I could then not worry about it.

Next step for me, buying a new computer and software!

udheeraj said

I've been seeing same issue. Usually happens when I restart Firefox or it crashes. Version: 46.0.1 OSX: 10.10 Rebooting the Mac fixes it though.

Udheeraj - I would post this as a new question too in the help area. Since the problem here was fixed with FF 44 so your problem with FF46 may be something different.