Clipboard (copy and paste) functionality not working

My experience with the Leopard clipboard has been pretty erratic. Sometimes it works fine: you copy something, you can paste it, if you look at the clipboard you can see the item on it. Sometimes it doesn't work: you copy and nothing happens, there is either nothing on the clipboard and it says so, or it says contents are unknown. Sometimes it shows nothing, but does correctly say what should be there (picture or text) and it will paste even though nothing is showing. Relaunching the Finder from the Dock will sometimes bring the functionality back (hold the option key down and click on the Finder's icon in the Dock, then select Relaunch). I don't know what is going on with this.
Francine


Francine
Schwieder

this is a nightmare. I have no drag and drop or cut and past functionality at all. Basically this has crippled any ability to move folders, copy or paste files or drag things to the trash. I cannot even copy or paste text!

I have the same issue. The last cut and paste brought my machine to a crawl, allocation 10GB+ of Virtual Memory. (from top -o cpu)

I have also lost my clipboard functionality now. Applications do not appear to be a part of the issue, as regardless of what app I copy from or attempt to paste to, all I ever get on the paste operation is a single *

Does not matter how I attempt to access the command (keyboard, context menu, or menubar).

I performed an upgrade from 10.4 to 10.5 day of release. I installed the 10.5.1 update the day it was released on software update.

Significant impact on my ability to get things done.

This did not work for me...i went through all the steps except repair disk because nothing was found during verify disk....so the button wasn't even available. Still having the same problems...

I've got a similar problem. No cut, copy or paste functions, menu or keystrokes.
I tried all the steps you listed, except the repair disk option,
as the repair disk button was grayed out.

I restarted, rebooted etc, nothing, still no copy and paste. help!!!!!!!!!!!

You can't repair the desk you are booted from. If verify disk didn't show any problems, then it probably didn't matter. However, if verify disk did show a problem, then you need to boot from the install disk, check your language, then go to the menu bar and select Disk Utility and run Repair Disk, and restart.
Francine


Francine
Schwieder

Followed the sequence:


Disk Utility...

Verify disk
Repair disk
Verify disk permissions
Repair disk permissions

Reboot....

And it worked perfect. Thanks you....

I experienced this problem after installing some Logitech software for a universal remote. The installation process required my administrator password, which I did not like. Logitech has a reputation for troublesome installs. At any event, I lost the ability to copy and paste. Nothing would go to the clipboard. I also noticed that I could not drag an application from a mounted disk image to the Application folder.

I tried the permission repair/disk repair/restart routine with no effect. Since the problem began after installing software, I suspected a problem with update of prebinding. This Terminal command followed by a restart, did the trick and restored copy/paste at once:

sudo update_prebinding -root / -force

Message was edited by: David Cross

Had this problem and curiously I had the Logitech software as well. I was able to resolve it by only running repair disk permissions. Another thread on the topic is at: http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=6231096#6231096