Copy+Paste and Drag+Drop are not working (Zotero for Mac)

JDenzinger

Both, 'drag + drop' and 'copy/cut + paste' from Zotero into another application (as Simple text and others, that used to work perfectly well) refuse to work. Edit menu displays the Cut and Copy entries grey (= disabled).

Trying standard Mac approaches to solve issue (restarting pboard, restarting computer) don't fix the problem.

Any ideas?

(OS 10.14.2 Mojave/ Zotero 5.0.60)

adamsmith

Cut and Copy are always greyed out. What is the entry you have listed below that? With a decault citation style selected under Export in the preferences, those would be Copy Citation and Copy Bibliography. If those don't show, check what you have in the Export tab of the preferences.

JDenzinger

After selecting an (any) entry I thought it was possible to copy/ paste…? Used it since several years with no problems.

Actually I think it was never an issue of the default style (at the moment it is Elsevier Harvard).
Selecting 'Copy Citation' and 'Copy Bib' selecting in menu works, but not the shortcuts (Cmd+C/ Cmd+V) or Drag and Drop?

adamsmith

The shortcuts are Cmd+Shift+c and then Cmd+V
Drag & Drop should work though.

JDenzinger

Thanks – ignoring the Sift Key was my stupid fault (although using standard shortkeys isn't always the worst thing).

But Drag + Drop unfortunately don't work.
(Probably that's the issue behind the forgotten shift – I either use D+D or Export whole collections…)

But I can deal with that and use the Cmd+Shift+c as a workarround.

dstillman

What program are you dragging to? If you provide a Debug ID for a drag attempt that doesn't work, we can take a look.

The keyboard shortcuts date to when Zotero ran in Firefox, which is why they're a bit verbose. Switching to Cmd-C for Quick Copy probably makes sense.

(I'm not sure what that would mean for Copy Citation, which is now Cmd-Shift-A. It would make sense to move that to Cmd-Shift-C, though lots of people would suddenly think that Quick Copy was producing incorrect output.)

JDenzinger

Changing to simple a copy citation (Cmd-C) might be dangerous for the existing users (knowing their routines aka ISO 9241-110's "conformity with user expectations") although it might be useful for new and irregular users.

I tried to drag to Indesign and Text Edit-Plus, Debug-ID is D1053486672.
(Problem also occurs with Text Edit and MS Word). Thanks, Jochen

dstillman

Skipping quick copy for 1 items

Did you change "Disable Quick Copy when dragging more than [ ] items" to 0 in the Export pane of the prefs?

JDenzinger

That's it, cool – I never changed that pref on purpose…
Either I changed it without intention it was an issue of updating something…

For future releases you may consider to disable the value "0" or to integrate a dialogue telling that "0" disables Drag+Drop and that the user is forced to confirm.


Thx, Jochen