OneNote pasting text issue

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88 points

OneNote pasting text issue

Hello, I have tried to search the web for this problem, I have sent reports to Apple and Microsoft, and for the life of me I can not figure out why this keeps happening, I am trying to take notes for school and I need to figure out this issue ASAP. Basically, almost every time I try to paste text into a page in OneNote, whether taken from a .pdf or from the web, a prompt shows up that says "Please Wait" and the app just hangs and eventually fails to respond, forcing me to force quit every time. The last time this happened I restarted my computer and it worked the first time I pasted text from email into a note, creating a new table for the text. The next few times I tried to paste text from a .pdf the app crashed without fail. Any help with this would be much appreciated. I use OneNote because it allows you to record audio while you take notes and conveniently marks the time so you can skip to that part in the audio next to the note you took. If there is a better application that does this I'm all ears. Thank you.

MacBook Pro TouchBar and Touch ID, macOS Sierra (10.12.6), 15-inch, Mid-2017

Posted on Sep 11, 2017 10:49 AM

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Answer 1

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ALeonardoA Author

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88 points

Sep 11, 2017 12:22 PM in response to ALeonardoA

I think I may have found the solution, or at least the reason to why this happens. I noticed that if you use command-c and command-v the program crashes almost every time, same goes for right click, paste. But in OneNote there is a Paste menu in the upper left corner that has other options, including "keep source formatting" "match formatting" and "keep text only". If I select "keep text only" it seems to work fine, even for text from a .pdf. I wonder if there's a preference to set this as default so I can use the commands? Anyways, at least for now this seems to be some kind of solution.

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Answer 2

Sep 11, 2017 11:04 AM in response to ALeonardoA

I have this same problem especially when I'm using High Sierra. I reported to both Apple and Microsoft and never got a response. However when I posted on Twitter, they replied and gave me this link to report.

TextExpander doesn’t work in OneNote for Mac – Welcome to OneNote’s Suggestion Box!

You can go back to the main link for OneNote since your problem doesn't involve TextExpander.

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Answer 3

ALeonardoA Author

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88 points

Sep 15, 2017 12:36 PM in response to RickMyers77

The command controls would also cause the program to crash, that was the first thing I tried. The only thing that works for me is to select "keep text only" when pasting text into OneNote and the only toggle for that which I have seen is in the clipboard menu in the upper-left corner. Not entirely sure what that means but I'm guessing is has something to do with how text is formatted when you copy and paste.

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Answer 4

Sep 23, 2017 4:23 PM in response to ALeonardoA

I found that using edit->paste from the menu in the upper window when using OneNote works. Using right click or control-v gives the eternal "Please wait..." dialog box. Thanks for this! Even though it still ***** to have to mouse up to the menu, at least OneNote is no longer totally useless to me. By the way, I can use the same notebook on a PC with no problem. Another Microsoft fail.

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Answer 5

Oct 3, 2017 6:55 AM in response to ALeonardoA

I have been having the same issue as well where I cannot directly copy and paste into OneNote. The only thing that works for me is using "Command+V." If I try to copy and paste directly, I get the "please wait" message and then it crashes. OneNote really needs to fix this issue. I don't mind pasting with "Command+V" for the time being, but I would like to be able to highlight text and then paste it directly in the long term.

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