cut and paste

Hi, Safari will will no longer allow me to cut and paste.
Imac 210.5.8

I may have disabled it yesterday when i was into preferences.

I'm a senior, not to computer savvy, so any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you,

Terry

What exactly are you trying to cut and paste while in Safari? Paste to where? There aren't many places while in a web browser like Safari that allow you to paste anything.

Thank you for your response.

I can not cut and paste anything, such as a link, or a quote or comment from an article etc. to respond or use it to make a comment to another.

Basically anything to anything.

I was in Safari preferences, and may have disabled something there.

I should also say, i've never had any problem with a cut and paste using Safari before yesterday.

Thanks.

What did you do in Preferences?

I don't know, i was in there for another reason that escapes me at the moment, and went through the preferences, and view, and it was after that when i noticed it.
It could even have happened before that.

I'm baffled, i've never had a problem cut and pasting in Safari before in all the years i've had my computer.

As i mentioned before, i'm a senior and have only been at this 5-6 years.

terry bare said:

I don't know, i was in there for another reason that escapes me at the moment, and went through the preferences, and view, and it was after that when i noticed it.
It could even have happened before that.

I'm baffled, i've never had a problem cut and pasting in Safari before in all the years i've had my computer.

As i mentioned before, i'm a senior and have only been at this 5-6 years.

Click to expand...

Hi Terry - first, I'm assuming that by 'Preferences' you mean in Safari (and not System Preferences); second, I would probably just 'Force Close' Safari and then launch it again - might work? (if not familiar w/ the process, just click the Apple in the upper left top menu > Force Quit > Select Safari). Your could also 'Reset Safari' (main menu option in the app) - of course, you would lose items but a list will pop-up and you can deselect those you do not want deleted. I'll stop there just to see if either of these steps will help - good luck! Dave

Hi Dave, thank you for your response.

Just got home and i tried the force quit, got it back from the apps and still have the same problem.
I'm assuming the main option in the apps is just the standard procedure to retrieve any app.

I believe i was into both Safari and apple.

Thanks
Terry

Two things you can try:

In the Safair menu at the upper left, choose Reset Safari... click all the boxes except passwords, then click Reset.

To restore Safari preferences to the original default, you have to delete com.apple.safari.plist which is found in your User Library's Preferences folder. Drag that file out of there to your Desktop and reopen Safari. If you're fine with the result, you can delete the file you removed, because there will be a new one created in Preferences.

In 10.5.8, you'll find the above folder down this path:

HD(whatever you named it)/Users/You(whatever you chose to name your user folder)/Library/Preferences

Thank you toMACsh,

I presented the problem to a friend of mine, and he suggested that when i highlight what is to be pasted, right click then choose copy.
From there i go to where i want it to place it, left click in the space i want it to go, then simply right click and choose paste.

I tried it when i got home home and it worked perfectly.

Before, all i had to do was drag it over and place it and it would work, and that's what failed me.

When he attempted the drag method this on his imac, his curser was highlighted by a green mark, and he could simply drag it over and it worked fine.

My curser does not have that green mark when dragging it over, and that may be my problem.

Just out of curiosity, when you attempt the drag process on your computer does it have the green highlight on the curser?

Thanks again.

terry bare said:

Thank you toMACsh,

Just out of curiosity, when you attempt the drag process on your computer does it have the green highlight on the curser?

Thanks again.

Click to expand...

You're welcome.
You caught me on a Monday. Bad. I check the forum at lunch from work. No Mac. I don't have the time at home to check in here on weeknights, only on Saturday and Sunday.

But, it almost sounds like a System User Interface glitch. The plist file for that is com.apple.systemuiserver.plist, if I recall correctly. Again, not at a Mac to be able to check. But it would be the same drill as in my other post for the Safari plist file.

On my MBP, ML 10.8.5, latest Safari, if I highlight text anywhere, then drag it, all that drags is the text, no box, no green thing. And it's a bit sensitive to dragging. Sometimes it just starts highlighting other stuff instead of dragging. I use CMD-C to copy, CMD-V to paste. It's more reliable than drag/drop for me. Highlight what to copy, CMD-c to copy, move to target, CMD-V to paste.