Cannot paste tabs into excel or google docs in v.8

[dunbarx]

Jacque posted this on the use list. Similar subject title.

In v.8, tabs are not recognized by excel or google docs, and likely not by any "spreadsheet" that is built in the usual way.

Code: Select all

 set the clipBoardData to "X" & tab & "Y" & tab & "Z"

Then try to paste into excel. You get "X Y Z" in a single cell, as if the tab (ASCII 9) characters were replaced, perhaps, with spaces. This is not the case with earlier versions of LC. And inside LC 8 itself, there is no issue pasting that string, formatted as advertised, into, say, a table field.

How do it know?

I am just reporting what Jacque has already posted. But this is a big bug.


Craig

[bogs]

Well, I found 2 things. Using Libre Office (linux), if you choose edit -> paste, then indeed it winds up in one cell.

If you use edit -> paste special -> unformatted text, then it puts it into 3 separate cells.

Unfortunately, I don't know the answer to your question.

[matthiasr]

Hi,

i´ve posted a reply to your post in the mailing list already. But to keep this discussion here current:

i cannot reproduce that here on Mac OS X and Excel 2016 (V 15.30).
I executed your sample code in the messagebox and was able to paste successfully the clipboard to Excel.
I even tried with alpha numeric values.

But what i noticed is the following:
When i just click on a cell, so that it is selected without showing the blinking write cursor in the cell, then pasting is working w/o problems.

When i double click a cell, so that it is selected and the blinking write cursor is shown, then i cannot paste it correctly.

Tried with LC 8.19RC2 and LC9DP11.

Will try on Windows later this day.


Regards,
Matthias

[bwmilby]

I also can't replicate this on Win10. I even added a second line (cr) and got the extra line but still went into multiple columns as long as a cell was selected (no insertion point cursor). As soon as you are inside a cell, everything pastes into that cell though. I tested with DP11, Excel 13.

I've also written a bit on the list thread.

[dunbarx]

I must backpedal just a little.

The original post on the use list stated that both Excel and a spreadsheet in Google Docs exhibited this behavior. I never actually tested Excel, only Google docs.

But in Googole Docs, as stated, and I understand the difference between a merely selected cell and one with a blinking cursor, I can go back and forth all day between v. 6.7.8 and v. 8.1.8, and the v.6 paste distributes over three cells, and the v.8 paste fills the selected cell.

Will check Excel soon.

Craig

[bwmilby]

PR 6293 should correct this issue (bug 19206). When plain text is copied to the clipboard, styled text will not be added.

Here's a function that can be used to prep the clipboard for text-only use outside LC:

Code: Select all

on makeClipboardPlainText
   local tClip, tRawType
   
   if the platform is "MacOS" then
      put "public.utf8-plain-text" into tRawType   -- OSX
   else if the platform is "Linux" then
      put "text/plain;charset=utf-8" into tRawType -- Linux
   else if the platform contains "Win" then
      put "CF_UNICODE" into tRawType -- Windows
   end if
   
   lock the clipBoard
   put the rawClipboardData[tRawType] into tClip
   set the rawClipboardData to empty
   set the rawClipboardData[tRawType] to tClip
   unlock the clipBoard
end makeClipboardPlainText

To use, place the information on the clipboard as usual. Call this handler before using the clipboard data outside of LC.

[bwmilby]

I've placed this function and one other in a file located here:
https://github.com/bwmilby/lc-misc/tree ... oardHelper

updateClipboardHtmlText will take the HTMLText that is on the clipboard and change the tags so that it will paste better into other applications. It won't do anything about the above tab issue, but it does address the extra line issue and missing spaces.

I figure GitHub is a better place for pieces of code like this so that if I make any updates, they will be generally available.