Copy & paste shortcut vs. keyboard

ejrbean

Has anyone else experienced this, and is there a reason why this happens? When I am trying to copy and paste, it works fine when I use ctrl+c and ctrl+v, but if I try to copy using the right click option, it appears nothing happens because there isn't an option to paste after, & if I try ctrl+v, it doesn't paste anything. It isn't a big deal because I can always use ctrl+c and ctrl+v, but I'm wondering if there is an explanation?

J. Craig Williams

Hello

Yes, I have experienced it. Yes, there is a reason why it happens, but that reasons can be different because of the number of possible reasons it is happening.

You are going to hear someone say it is your browser. It might be.

They'll say to check for browser extension conflicts, try closing and reopening the sheet, closing and restarting the browser, taking a walk around the block.

Again, it might be the browser. Never hurts to add which browser you are using to the ticket.

However, there are numerous factors that can effect Smartsheet's behavior with copy/paste functionality. I thought I had written a post about it but apparently I didn't. 

Watch for symptoms. Does it seem to work and then stop? Or just never seems to work at all? 

Does the browser troubleshooting work for a while and then stop again?

Is it every sheet or just one or a few?

Then it is probably not the browser.

Some obvious things 

- is the Clipboard working (I have programs that hijack it unexpectedly on occasion)

- is the column or row locked?

- does the Sheet take what seems like a long time to load?

- is the sheet big but not huge (less than 750 rows x 120 columns)

- lots of formulas?

- how complicated are the formulas? -- complexity is both related to length of the formula, how many arguments there are, how many functions are called, how big of a range it in the formula

 Note: if your formulas are not using @row and can, they should. That might help.

- are there 'lots' of x-sheet references 

- 'lots' of conditional formatting rules?

- 'lots' of people with access to the Sheet (better to access data via Reports if that is the problem)

(lots is hard to define and should have gotten larger since my last testing)

- watch for the Save button to go on. Sometimes when multiple users are access and updating the sheet, the sheet's save mechanism can get out of sync. 

So ... does this happen? Yes. Why? It depends.

If you contact support, try to have ruled out the browser because they are likely to focus there until you get past the first level of tech support.

Happy hunting

Craigg