Copy/Paste broken in MacOS Sierra

Me too! I have been dealing with this since my upgrade as well. It seems to work for a few days and then stops working again. It really inhibits my work and to have to restart when I didn't intend to is very frustrating. The last time I restarted (today) it didn't fix the issue. Now I have to figure out what to do now, if restarting no longer works. Yikes!!

I never experienced this problem until two weeks ago. Now it is getting highly annoying. Restart does help but only for a few hours.

I see few instances of this problem:

1) Cut and paste doesn't work at all

2) Contents of the clipboard get stuck. So no new cut/copy is possible, but I can paste stuck content. Sometimes quitting the application that copied the stuck text works.

I noticed that when cut and paste stops working it dragging and drop.

Hello,

This is a while ago,

I upgraded iMAC and MBP to Sierra. Only iMAC had this problem.

Not a perfect solution, but I made a partition to HD and made a clean install to another partition. Then I used migration assistant to move individual components from the original (problematic) system.

I found the problem was specifically associated with importing my personal settings. Importing applications did not cause the problem. So I only imported applications. Later I copied my other work-related documents and photos, etc manually, and also manually set up my environment under new partition.

Problem never showed up since I started working with this new copy.

I still do not know what specifically in my personal setting caused this issue.

In case it helps.

Mr Sequeira,

I have read your comments in this thread carefully. I strongly urge you to desist from contributing further. You are provocative without reason.

With all due respect, you do not, in fact, assist people with actual knowledge or useful suggestions. Rather, you seek to debate the virtue of the brand and silence those who do not wave the Apple flag with sufficient vigour.

With respect to the flaws in the OS, and in the Apple software such as Pages, it is clear that Apple do not see themselves as serious manufacturers of professional grade word processing software. The support they have offered with respect to this issue, over more than four years of recurring failures, is highly instructive. They will both invest time and treasure into excellence, or even competence in this regard. They just don't care about word processing.

Therefore, if you rely upon word processing for work, get a different brand machine. If you wish to surf the web on a small, elegant machine, and show off a popular brand to your peers, buy another Apple computer.

There is nothing wrong with fashion, and wanting to be seen as modern and strictly conformist. Nor is there anything wrong with strict functionality. Do you need a hat to protect you from the sun, or do you want one to wear to the show?

This issue has been around for many years and has not been fixed or even treated seriously.

cynik wrote:

Mr Sequeira,

I have read your comments in this thread carefully. I strongly urge you to desist from contributing further. You are provocative without reason.

It was not Luis who was being provocative. Luis provided accurate help and never rose to the bait that the other poster was dangling. And, as long as anyone is within the Terms of Use, they are free to continue posting. Telling them not to is very poor form.

I really don't understand people who have just signed up and then feel it's acceptable to dictate to people who've provided as much help to others as has Luis.

Perhaps you are correct, we can agree to differ. I agree that Mr Sequeria is free to post as he likes. I urged him to post fewer comments on this issue, having assessed his knowledge of the actual technical issue (scant at best).

As for me having "just signed up", I am one of the oldest mac forum users you will ever meet. I've bought my first Apple in 1991, and have been programming them for decades.

The thing is, I don't post much. Probably about one post every five years or so. I'm on fire just now. Two in one day!

IMO, these forums are Apple's way of not spending money but appearing to fix shoddy software. Sometimes users will offer you useful information and a fix, but most often it is for folks who talk too much and who have a weird, burning need to been seen as helpful and smart by their peers.

Notice how paid Apple staff don't waste their precise time fixing folks problems with their products?

Yeah, I noticed that too.

cynik wrote:

I urged him to post fewer comments on this issue, having assessed his knowledge of the actual technical issue (scant at best). seen as helpful and smart by their peers.

How many people have you helped in these forums? How about demonstrating all this knowledge you profess to have?

As for me having "just signed up", I am one of the oldest mac forum users you will ever meet. I've bought my first Apple in 1991, and have been programming them for decades.

I've certainly had Macs for longer than that.

IMO, these forums are Apple's way of not spending money but appearing to fix shoddy software. Sometimes users will offer you useful information and a fix, but most often it is for folks who talk too much and who have a weird, burning need to been seen as helpful and smart by their peers.

Notice how paid Apple staff don't waste their precise time fixing folks problems with their products?

Apple staff have been absolutely great when I've taken a problem to them. By making an appointment at my local Apple Store. This forum is not a replacement for Apple Customer Service. It's an added bonus that Apple runs solely for the benefit of its customers. They're very clear about that in the Terms of Use.

I think it's just a little sad when people contribute nothing but criticism while boasting about their superior knowledge.

So here is my current understanding of the cause of this and a solution that is little bit better than what has been proposed here by others.

There is are two system processes

/usr/libexec/pboard

/System/Library/CoreServices/pbs

Looks like these processes are responsible for holding and maintaining the paste buffer ( OS X name for the clipboard). These processes also maintain a system socket that other application talk to, that's how they can exchange the cut and paste material

There was a change introduced in the past few month that causes this processes to to fail and quit sometimes. They may or may not get automatically restarted by the OS X. But even when they do get restarted,

But even after the process is restarted the other applications are still trying to talk to the old socket. For which nobody is listening to.

So my solution is to check if these processing are running, if not restart them. And then restart the applications for which the Cut and Paste is broken.

This is not ideal solution, it's pain to restart Google Chrome and PyCharm with dozens of tabs and windows open, but that's bit better than restarting everything

Please can someone help?

I can copy but i cant paste it then.

I tried all. Restarting, also with Safe Mod - in safe mod paste doesnt work as well.

Am really confused because I have tried all options which you all gave here.

When I open the finder and search the files in the folder and copy the search result to paste into another folder. The "apparently" copy is done, but when I paste it it does not glue, even giving a "beep" when I call command + V.

One thing I noticed is the following, the folder data is videos, then the app icon that opens the videos appears, when I search the results all the videos are without the video app icon with that default file icon, it seems that in search results the finder does not identify the file type. When I click on command + I in the search result this text appears in Sharing / Permissions file: "you have unknown access".

This started to happen after I upgraded to the High Sierra, in the Sierra work.

My Copy / Paste stopped working after updating to High Sierra. I read that installing Microsoft Remote Access would fix it which it did not. I then read another post referring to Clip Managers affecting certain systems. I uninstalled the Manager I was using and that fixed the issue. I then had to find another Manager that would conflict and cause Copy / Paste to stop working. In time I guess all Manager apps will fix this issue.

I have this issue as well. I updated to High Sierra the other day, and found that I can no longer paste web address from Fetch, into any other app. Copy seems to work, but not pasting… When I try to paste [cmd P] I get the error sound. Depending on the length of the addresses I’m working with, this issue can turn what should be a simple 2-second copy/paste into a minutes long process. This is killing my productivity. Please please help.

Restarting in safe-mode is like fixing a broken fender with duct tape. Having to do this every time you want to cut and paste between apps makes a computer all but useless. Apple should be offering a permanent fix for this problem!

Same problem here, not good enough to say small numbers only, many people never use this facility. the pboard deletion reactivated it for me but it is possible working in Terminal with Cut and Paste knocks it out again, I did the OSX Sierra upgrade a few weeks ago but also did a Terminal/ Command Lines 10.13 for Xcode upgrade and it might have been from that--just a possibility. I think the finger does point to Sierra upgrade or Terminal.

[SOLVED] After reading and trying every tricks in the book: erasing .pbody files, killall .pbs, clearing pram memory, repairing disk permission, messing with the Terminal command... I resign and decided to do a clean install. Well guess what ? Right after my time machine backup the copy/paste function worked again. So I guess it's a memory problem somehow.