Problems copying and pasting text into forum posts

If you are using Internet Explorer as your web browser, when trying to copy/paste text into a post from another document, you may have experienced the issue with seeing a pop-up window each time, asking “Do you want to allow this webpage to access you clipboard?”

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If you select ‘Allow access’, you are presented with another window into which you can paste. However, if you click the default ‘Don’t allow’ option, you will not be able to paste into the text area.

The issue is due to a browser setting in Internet Explorer. Below are two ways to resolve the problem, the first is a quick temporary fix, the second is a long-term fix that should prevent the annoying window prompting you to allow access to the clipboard from showing each time you want to paste.  

Alternatively, we recommend you use another browser such as Firefox, or Chrome to access our forum. These browsers should let you paste directly into the text area when posting, without showing the additional paste window, which is much simpler!

A quick work- around solution:

  1. Go back to the content you copied from. Copy it again to your clipboard.
  2. Refresh the forum page you want to paste it into.
  3. Paste (either using right-click > paste, or Ctrl+V)
  4.  If the window prompting you to ‘Allow access to the clipboard’ is shown again, select ‘Allow’.  
  5. You will then be presented with another window into which you can paste the text.

A long term fix:

To prevent the ‘Allow access..’ pop-up window from appearing each time you try to copy-paste, you need to add the website to your list of trusted sites in Internet Explorer, and ‘allow programmatic clipboard access’. See detailed instructions on how to do this here
(If your ability to modify the list of trusted sites is restricted to a system administrator, you will need to ask them to do this for you).