Mail edit drag n drop bug

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Level 2

272 points

Mail edit drag n drop bug

Drag and drop to edit text when composing a message in Mail sometimes does a cut and paste, other times does a copy and paste. The correct function is to always cut and paste. This has been confirmed in notes posted by Dee Run and by James WIlson7, although those notes are now archived. A response to Dee Run by Goldenshoes suggests careful clicking can provide a workaround. However, there should be no need for such finess: if drag n drop moves text, it should always perform a cut and paste. The fact that it sometimes does a copy and paste is a bug.

This is a minor problem, but it is an irritating defect which I have observed through several versions of OSX: I don't remember how long, maybe back to 10.4 or earlier. I suspect the fix will be fairly simple, such as insuring a bit is set properly before the edit is carried out. I have reported the problem several times and keep hoping, but no fix yet.

It is important for the user experience that drag n drop always perform as advertised. It seems more requests for a fix will be necessary to get this repaired. It might be helpful if others confirm here their observation of this problem. Please join me in bringing this to the attention of Apple through the feedback in Mail.

Mac Pro 3,1, Mac OS X (10.6.7), HP Photosmart C6180, Canon SD 950 IS, Canon Vixia HF100

Posted on May 20, 2011 8:44 AM

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Answer 1

thomas_r.

Level 7

31,989 points

May 20, 2011 10:29 AM in response to Tom Ritch

I have never seen the behavior you describe in Mail, and cannot coax it to happen now except when I hold down the Option key to make it copy instead of move the selection. Either there's something wrong with your system, or you are inadvertently holding down Option.

Your reference to "confirmation" by Dee Run and James Wilson7 is meaningless without context, as neither appears to be a user on these forums. (At least, the forum software is not finding users with matching names.) Perhaps you could provide a link?

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Answer 2

Tom Ritch Author

Level 2

272 points

May 20, 2011 11:47 AM in response to thomas_r.

Thanks for the reply, Thomas.

I don't think I have a problem with my system, nor that I am doing something wrong. I have seen this intermittently for years through many system upgrades. I try to keep things in order by frequent scanning with Disk Utilities and occasional full rebuilds with Disk Warrior and cache cleaning with Onyx.

Goldenshoes suggested that doing the drag and drop more slowly would reliably lead to cut and paste. I have not investigated this, but it suggests that perhaps if you did drag and drop more quickly you might see the copy and paste behavior.

The posts by Dee Run and James Wilson7 I found by searching for Mail Edit drag drop. Dee Run said

Strange drag and drop text editing behavior in Mail

The response form Goldenshoes is in this thread.

Strangely, now I cannot find the post from James Wilson7 even though I found it easily earlier today, and I can find many of his other posts: James Wilson7's Stuff. Perhaps the post I am looking for is not present because this is "James Wilson7's Latest Content" and the post I found earlier had been archived.

Well, now I have found the post by searching for "Mail drag drop".

Text drag and drop creates a copy

Looking at these other posts in more detail, I see that James Wilson 7 observed the problem in Mail/OS X 10.5.2, Dee Run observed it in 10.6, and in a reply the problem was confirmed running 10.6.1 by Michel Chaouli.

Message was edited by: Tom Ritch

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Answer 3

nemodomi

Level 1

10 points

Apr 8, 2012 6:52 PM in response to Tom Ritch

Same deal here. Just sayin'.

Has been going on for years. Annoying to say the least.

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Answer 4

Dec 21, 2012 7:00 AM in response to Tom Ritch

I've had the same problem through several versions of OS X and still do (v 10.7.5). This has been true for me on a few different Macs.

Just wanted to add a "me too" in hopes that it helps.

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Answer 5

Jan 4, 2013 1:29 AM in response to Tom Ritch

me too. same problem for ages..

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Answer 6

notoze

Level 1

4 points

Feb 19, 2013 8:58 AM in response to Tom Ritch

Repair permissions.

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Answer 7

nemodomi

Level 1

10 points

Feb 19, 2013 9:40 AM in response to notoze

notoze wrote:

Repair permissions.

NOT a solution, notoze. my permissions get repaired every night as part of my backup process (SuperDuper!). i just had an instance of this mail.app behavior this morning.

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Answer 8

May 10, 2013 12:24 PM in response to Tom Ritch

Same here, very annoying, for a good while now, just happened again... Repairing permissions has affected the problem not at all...

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Answer 9

Jan 28, 2014 3:58 AM in response to Tom Ritch

same here. osx mavericks, MBP late 2011 2.66 core2duo mail version 7.1

although, i think this exists since osx 10.4 or so. forever. every update there's the increasingly slimmer hope someone fixes this, since i use this feature in other text editing apps all the time.

fix this, folks. can't be hard (i know, it's what they say in billions of lines of code. still.).

thanks.

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Answer 10

Eric Root

Level 10

684,039 points

Jan 28, 2014 9:41 AM in response to chaseinger

Send Apple feedback. They won't answer, but at least will know there is a problem. If enough people send feedback, it may get the problem solved sooner.

Mail/Provide Mail Feedback

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Answer 11

Tom Ritch Author

Level 2

272 points

Oct 20, 2014 7:57 AM in response to Tom Ritch

In the release version of Yosemite, in a couple of times editing while composing an email, Drag and Drop has worked as it should. Could it be fixed?

The bug has always been intermittent, so it may be that I was just lucky a couple of times. In earlier Yosemite betas it was still present. I reported it (again) via Feedback Assistant, thinking that might better secure this issue in the queue of bugs to be fixed. I hope creation of Feedback Assistant indicates Apple's intention to do better cleaning up the large accumulation of issues in so much of its software. Now, trying to be optimistic, I wonder if this bug has been fixed.

Anyone else have observations to contribute?

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Answer 12

Oct 30, 2014 11:50 AM in response to Tom Ritch

Running 10.10 (migrated into a clean install) and the problem is still with me.

Funny thing is that the behavior isn't consistent. Sometimes the drag and drop *moves* the text (cut and paste), other times it duplicates it (copy/paste).

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Answer 13

Tom Ritch Author

Level 2

272 points

Oct 30, 2014 4:32 PM in response to Mac Paramedic

Thanks, M P. Drag and Drop worked for me a couple of time, not for you a few times. This intermittent bug remains, just as it has been for about ten years now.

Bug reports have been filed. All we can do is continue waiting.

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Answer 14

750 H2C

Level 1

66 points

Oct 16, 2015 12:28 AM in response to Tom Ritch

+1. This bug has been with me through several OS X versions, on a couple of computers with no connection between them whatsoever in terms of preferences/settings.

I haven't thought about whether the bug is limited to Mail, though, or if it's system-wide. Can anyone confirm it's only in Mail?

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Answer 15

Tom Ritch Author

Level 2

272 points

Dec 2, 2015 10:44 AM in response to 750 H2C

Looks to me like the bug is only in the editor for composing new messages in Mail On My Mac. I tested a new message being composed in iCloud Mail, and Drag and Drop work as expected. I also tested while composing this reply. In this editor Drag and Drop also work as expected.

Proper function in many other text editors in Apple products suggests to me that the bug is not in the frameworks from which these apps inherit text editing. Continuing of the error in Mail, ongoing through many system versions which often claimed great improvements in Mail, suggests to me the error is in legacy code specific to Mail.

For Apple framework bugs, developers of other applications which use those common frameworks often create fixes which arelocal to that application. Since local fixes could mask appearance of a system-wide bug, examining other applications is not a reliable assay for the bug.

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