Apple Mac tab delimited plain text will not paste correctly into tables.

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Apple Mac tab delimited plain text will not paste correctly into tables.

I have recently encountered this bug in the Mac OS, although I see others posting about similar behavior in the more distant past.

Problem: tab delimited text in the clipboard pastes into a single cell (by row), not into multiple cells per normal. That is to say, if I have a line of text:

One(tab)Two(tab)Three

And paste this into a table in either numbers or pages, that entire line of text goes into a single cell. If I have several rows of similar text, it goes into single cells/columns on each respective row. If I paste this same text into Excel, it pastes as expected in 3 adjacent cells/columns in the same row.

If I convert this plain text into RTF, it pastes with normal behavior into separate columns.

I have no 3rd party clipboard software installed.

I have restarted my computer.

I have been plagued with the same behavior on both my iMac and MacBook Pro.

Running macOS 12.6.6 and Numbers 13.1.

With the conversion to RTF, I have a workaround, but clearly this is a bug. If someone has a fix, that would be wonderful. If someone can get apple to fix this, that would be amazing.

Thanks.

Posted on Jun 14, 2023 7:19 AM

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Answer 1

Top-ranking reply

Badunit

Level 7

30,564 points

Jun 14, 2023 11:34 AM in response to Silomacian2

Works fine here unless I am doing something different than you.

If you single click on a cell to select it, then paste, it should tab separate to separate columns (and rows if it is multi-line text separated by carriage returns).

If you double click on a cell and the cursor starts blinking in the cell, it will paste it all into the one cell

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Answer 2

Silomacian2 Author

Level 1

4 points

Jun 15, 2023 7:00 AM in response to Badunit

Hi Badunit. Thanks again for the follow up and interest in this issue.

Please take a look at Yellowbox's post. He made me aware of a numbers feature "table data was imported and can be adjusted" that brings up a dialog that allows finite control over the "import" of data. I think I am seeing this change in behavior because of a setting change in numbers.

I wonder if this dialog was always an option and I just never saw it before because I was focused on my data not pasting correctly? But it seems to be there in each of my subsequent tests. I can reproduce the "bad" data paste and then correct it by opening that import dialog and switch the settings to tab delimited.

I am considering this problem solved. Does not appear to be a bug, but a feature change that required a little education. Just didn't know about it. I'm switching this to the upgrade category.

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Answer 3

Badunit

Level 7

30,564 points

Jun 15, 2023 6:51 AM in response to Silomacian2

Yes, the picture helps. I now see that it is not a regular pattern of tab-delimited text. I get the same results as you.

I don't thing we should expect the same results as Excel in every case but it is odd that it does one thing with RTF and another with plain text. I think it should do the same. In the menu system is Numbers->Provide Numbers Feedback. Report it as a bug. Maybe I'll track this bug along with the numerous others I have been tracking and waiting for them to fix.

Additional stuff:

I tried the same text but as comma delimited for the first two lines. As plain text, Excel separated only the lower line of tab delimited text while Numbers separated nothing. As RTF, Excel separated nothing while Numbers separated the lower line of tab delimited text. Opposite results.

Excel fails to separate

1,2,3

4,5,6

when pasted in as either plain text or RTF. Numbers will separate it in both formats.

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Answer 4

Yellowbox

Level 7

21,939 points

Jun 15, 2023 5:48 AM in response to Silomacian2

Hi Silomacian2,

In TextEdit, plain text, tab delimited:

Copied and pasted (single click in cell A2) into a Numbers table:

I see the same when I copy and paste from a Numbers Text Box, or copy and paste from the body of a Pages document.

How does that differ from what you see?

Regards,

Ian.

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Answer 5

Silomacian2 Author

Level 1

4 points

Jun 15, 2023 4:56 AM in response to Badunit

Badunit, thank you for the reply. I appreciate the tutorial, but you are not describing the behavior/problem I am having. I am adding some screen shots because a picture is worth a thousand words.

First is of the plain text source in BBEdit with invisible characters showing to clarify the text structure (spaces, tabs and commas). Second and third examples are the text pasted into numbers (appropriate) showing the results of pasting plain text and RTF formatted text.

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Answer 6

Silomacian2 Author

Level 1

4 points

Jun 15, 2023 6:30 AM in response to Yellowbox

Ian,

You have made something magical happen. Not sure how, or why, but I have never before seen the message "table data was imported and can be adjusted". That is exactly the clue and feature I need. Do you know how to make that appear? I searched help menu for it and found nothing.

I would postulate that at some point my settings automagically changed away from tab delimited import as a default which is why the behavior of numbers changed and I could not understand why.

Very grateful for the insight, thank you very much.

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