I am running Scivener 1.7.3.0
This is very odd to me. I have been away from Scivener for a while so maybe I am missing something very basic as I get back into thing but it’s very odd. I have a bunch of documents that I am pulling into Scrivener to join into one big project. For various reasons it was just easier to open each document to make sure I wanted to pull it in and then copy and past it into a new doc in my project folder.
Most of the documents are in Word. I open them, select all, copy, and paste. Move on. Everything is fine.
A few of the documents are in text files. Just basic Windows Notepad. I open the txt file, copy and paste into Scrivener but it won’t paste. It stays blank. I can paste it into an open Word file, then copy from there and paste into Scrivener and it works fine. I just can’t copy from a plain text file and paste into Scrivener.
Have I done something odd on my end? (I always assume it is me and not the program.)
Thanks!
We had a similar report a while ago from someone on Windows 8 where paste just wasn’t in some circumstances, but we were never able to track down the cause. Paste from Notepad certainly should be working. What happens if you use Paste and Match Style (Ctrl+Shift+V) instead of the regular paste? Would it be possible to share a sample file that isn’t copying? You can upload it as an attachment here (you may need to zip it or change the extension; I think the board rejects .txt files) or send it to windows.support AT literatureandlatte DOT com if you prefer.
In the meanwhile, can you open the .txt file directly in Word or WordPad (right-click and “Open With”) and copy and paste from there?
Whoops, I should have said I am on Windows 7.
Also forgot that I had to click notify me of a reply. I thought I was automatically subscribed to all posts I started. Fixed that now.
So Paste and Match Style doesn’t work either. I have also tried to paste in the search bar to search for text and it didn’t work.
I also saved a new Notepad file, closed and reopened it and it still didn’t work.
I’ve zipped up one text file but it seems to be from any txt files on my machine.
Thanks so much for looking into this.
letters to flyboy3.zip (807 Bytes)
Ah, thanks for the extra details. All right, so nothing with the file itself. I don’t know if this will add much, but could you try these steps?
- Open a file in notepad or create a new one with some simple text. Try copying and pasting it to a new blank document in Scrivener to make sure it’s not working.
- In the Scrivener installation folder (e.g. C:\Program Files (x86)\Scrivener), open the clipboard.exe program.
- Paste the copied text from Notepad into the top portion of the Clipboad program
In the lower section, it should show you exactly what you have in Notepad, but at the top it should say
Formats: text/plain
text/plain:
Scroll through it and make sure it is in fact identical and there aren’t any extra odd characters or other information about the paste (e.g. other format details).
In Notepad, do you have Format > Word Wrap enabled? It shouldn’t make any difference for this, but it can affect line breaks in text, so we might as well check.
I’m assuming too that this is just the copy and paste from Notepad. If you import the .txt document instead, or if you open it in Word or WordPad and then copy and paste from there to Scrivener, it works correctly, yes?
Okay, I did the easy one first and took the Word Wrap off in Notepad and it didn’t make any difference.
Off to try the other stuff.
Nope. See attached screenshot. I don’t get the same as you do.
Sorry, I wasn’t clear. The screenshot does look as expected, with the same text above and below except with the format info at the top of the bottom portion. Hm. I’ll keep thinking.
Any more ideas on this one?
Thanks.
Susan
Afraid not, but I’m waiting to hear back if the developers have any ideas on this. You could try a replacement text editor for Notepad in the meanwhile, something like Notepad++. That might be overkill for your needs, but it’s the first free text editor that springs to mind. I like Sublime, but it’s paid, so overkill again for just working with simple plain-text files. An online search will probably bring up some alternatives if you wanted to try something.
Okay, thanks. Here’s hoping for an update soon.
