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kahunamike
Contributor
Contributor

Copy Paste in Fusion 3 (Text as Images)

I'm having difficulty with trying to Copy and Paste between Fusion and Mac OS X Snow Leopard. When I copy from Microsoft Excel or Microsoft OneNote in Fusion and Paste it in Mac OS X, it always pastes it as an image. I don't want it as an image and the only workaround that I have thought of is to paste it in Notepad within Windows XP and then Copy-Paste it into Mac OS X. Is there a way to default it back to the way Fusion 2 handled Copy-Paste. I may just stick with Fusion 2 if there's not a good fix since it's wasting a lot of my time. Thanks.

Macbook Pro 10.6 Snow Leopard

Windows XP running in VMWare Fusion 3

Mike

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angelday
Contributor
Contributor

I want to second this request.

This behaviour is just driving me crazy. Is there an option to turn it off?

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fns
Contributor
Contributor

I have the same problem. Put back the rich text copy to Fusion 3!

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hilld1
Contributor
Contributor

This is a major problem, I upgraded to Fusion 3 today and I cannot live with the missing copy/paste. Time to downgrade back to version 2.0.6

VMWare, how could you let this happen, what ever happened to your QA department?

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maztec
Contributor
Contributor

Ditto here. However, it does not happen all of the time. Usually text copies and pastes as a tiff. However, if I copy and paste a small section of text about one out of three times it comes across as text ... not a tiff. No clue what is going on here. It is very unidirectional too. Copy in Windows 7, Paste to Snow Leopard == Tiff most of the time. Copy in Snow Leopard, Paste in Windows 7 == Text always. I cannot find any setting about this and the release notes seem to hint that copy and apste was a major design consideration in Fusion 3.

Please fix!

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angelday
Contributor
Contributor

maztec, I think if you copy from within a cell in Excell, it will be text, but if it's larger selection, then image.

OK, people, listen up. I know this was a major feature overhaul in Fusion 3, I don't mind development and everything. At least the devs could provide a switch to leave pasting as it was before. (On the other hand I cannot think of a scenario where I want TIFF as a result of some cells copied from Excel.)

I sincerely hope devs see this thread as not some kind of a "I want the old Facebook design back" mirror, but a real and legit request.

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hilld1
Contributor
Contributor

My problem is trying to copy text from my Mac to my VM running Win XP. The apps I am using are SQL Management Studio Express and Watchguard System Manager, something that is not available on a Mac. In Fusion 2.0.x I could simply highlight and copy/paste between the Mac and the guest OS's, but no longer in Fusion 3. If it works in Excel, that is great, but doesn't do much for me. How hard is it to downgrade back to Fusion 2.0,x after the VMTools in the guests have been upgraded. I will probably give VM Ware support a call today as they don't appear to chime in here or even monitor this thread.

I feel like I want my money back.

Derek

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angelday
Contributor
Contributor

Derek, please let us know what support has told you about the issue.

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hilld1
Contributor
Contributor

OK,

I tried calling, but for Fusion all you get is email support, so I have filed a ticket. The response was "we will get back to you by 11/04, so now we just wait", maybe all of you should file a ticket (you should have gotten 30 days support with your Fusion 3 purchase), the more people file, the bigger the issue becomes.

Derek

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maztec
Contributor
Contributor

I apologize if you thought I was restricting my comment to Excel. I wasn't.

I have tried from everything. Consistently, if I copy more than roughly 160 characters I get a tiff. Wordpad = Tiff; Notepad = Tiff; OneNote = Tiff; Word = Tiff; WordPerfect = Tiff; CMD Line Text Window = Tiff; OpenOffice = Tiff! I shorten how much I copy, and I get text, but after a certain amount suddenly TIFF! Good lord, it could at least be a file format that is useful to me, but no, it's a TIFF - 90% of people can't figure out how to open it. Heck, half the time, what i am doing is posting into email - hwere it looks like text, but I send, and the person on the other end's response is, "What did you just send me?"

This is very frustrating.

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hilld1
Contributor
Contributor

Interesting, I get nothing, not even a TIFF.

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maztec
Contributor
Contributor

hilld: I have had that happen a few times. I think it depends on what I highlight the text with, but haven't explored enough to really figure it out.

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hilld1
Contributor
Contributor

Ok, it is now working for me. Support had me uninstall and then re-install VMWare Tools. I had originally just upgraded VMWare tools after the upgrade from Fusion 2 -> 3. I am not sure if this will solve your guys issue with the TIFF files, but all I am copying is text between Word/Text Edit on my Mac to SQL Server Management tools on my Win XP VM. That is now working. Hopefully uninstalling tools and re-installing tools will work for you as well.

Derek

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maztec
Contributor
Contributor

I uninstalled tools, reinstalled, still tiffs, I uninstalled tools & vmware, reinstalled, still tiffs.

Bah Humbug!

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hilld1
Contributor
Contributor

You might want to contact support, to do so, login to your VMWare account and look at your registered products. You should have free 30 days support with your Fusion purchase/upgrade.

Derek

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angelday
Contributor
Contributor

Since this is a "common" problem, resolving it is not advised on a per user basis.

Is there a workaround to this? I suppose reinstalling tools won't solve it.

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WilliamReid
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

I'm in the process of replicating this issue and will keep you posted.

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angelday
Contributor
Contributor

William, thanks for your response.

To help you I recorded a simple demonstration of this: http://screencast.com/t/QC1UX2Ib

The expected result (as was in VMware 2.0.x versions) is a simple text table. I understand in some cases a TIFF result is desired, but mostly it's not. I would be happy if there was an option in the prefs to turn this off.

Feel free to ask for further clarification.

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WilliamReid
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

Thanks for providing the video... I am in the process of seeing if this issue is present in 2.x series and will update you as I have more information.

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peter_serwe
Contributor
Contributor

I have exactly the same problem with 3.x, and I'm going to need to backrev if this can't be resolved relatively soon. I am not particularly disappointed with 3.x's speed, and it's not hammering my laptop inordinately, but this cutting and pasting from VM to Mac and vice-versa has got to get fixed quickly. I'm losing a lot of valuable hours in workflow, and I can't bill for them.

Granted, the product was inexpensive, less than an hour's worth of my time, so I don't mind dumping the investment, but it's a bit of a PITA to go through that.

Also, can I back-convert my VM? I'm not really worried about data on the VM, because I use files off the shared host drive exclusively, providing me a pretty seamless Mac>XP>Mac experience, but still.

Peter

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