Google Docs – Copy/Paste Actions Unavailable via Edit Menu

copy/pastegoogle docsgoogle-drawingskeyboard shortcuts

When selecting copy/paste from the right-click menu, why does Google Docs pop up a dialog to say:

Copying and Pasting in Google Docs

with the message:

These actions are unavailable via the Edit menu, but you can still use Ctrl-C or Ctrl-V

etc when it could just do the operation direct from the menu?

Copy and Paste is in the menu…

copy and paste is in the menu

…but selecting it says you can't do it, use Ctrl-C etc
but selecting it says you can't do it, use Ctrl-C etc

What was the design thinking behind this?

I can't understand why one can't just do the operation, after all:

  1. It provides the menu options: copy and paste
  2. when you select these, it knows what they are to tell you
  3. it can do the copy and paste but via Ctrl-C, Ctrl-V etc.
  4. Surely they can link the Google Docs code that handles the menu selection with the code that actually does the operation

Was it a patent issue?

A security issue?

Or some kind of user interface conflict that made this extra step mandatory?

Best Answer

I will assume you're not using Chrome, which is why my answer is relevant.

Check out this article on copy/pasting in Google Drive documents:

When working in Chrome, you can use the right-click menu to copy and paste content (or select "Copy" or "Paste" from the Edit menu in the toolbar).

When using the right-click-context menu in Drive, the stuff you cut/copy/paste is stored in a different place (in Chrome). Therefore, if not using Chrome, you won't be able to use the menu options. The keyboard shortcuts still work because those pieces are stored elsewhere (on the system clipboard, not browser).

Update: a little more context - Chrome uses its own web clipboard. Why? I'm not 100% certain but I think it's so that you can preserve things when pasting across files or apps (like Spreadsheets to Documents, etc) which you can't do with the traditional system clipboard. Since the context-menu is also native to the app that it's running (in this case your Drive and Chrome are all connected together), the context-menu will behave differently when used in Firefox. This is because those specific options are looking to access the Chrome clipboard, which it cannot.

My answer becomes even more conjecture at this point: I would bet that the Ctrl+C event is overwritten in Chrome to copy/cut to the Chrome clipboard, but would naturally default to the system clipboard if not in Chrome. The context-menu doesn't behave the same way because, well, I have no idea :) Might be something to bring up in a product forum though...

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