25

I am trying to ask a question on SE, have some mock data in Excel I've copied, and am simply trying to paste in to my question. I've done this before dozens of times, but suddenly am having this issue.

However, when I do so, I get prompted to upload an image. (This happens with Ctrl + V and also right click --> Paste):

Enter image description here

Am I overlooking something?

Edit: Playing around, I can copy from Firefox/browsers and Word, and paste in to the box as usual. Excel seems to be the only one giving the issue so far.

Edit2: Other users are still having this issue.

Improve this question
15
  • 2
    It looks like the thing inside your clipboard is an image, and it's triggering the mechanism that allows you to copy and paste image data. Try re-copying it. – Sonic the Anonymous Hedgehog Dec 14 '18 at 17:01
  • @SonictheInclusiveHedgehog - I've tried again and again. I think it's the way Excel maybe puts the data in the clipboard? – BruceWayne Dec 14 '18 at 17:02
  • 5
    I can replicate. Copy a range from excel, paste here into stackexchange, prompt to paste image box pops up. Pasting into Notepad pastes the same clipboard as text, tab delimited, as expected. @BruceWayne FWIW, you could copy and paste into notepad and recopy/paste into stackexchange. I also, generally, paste into ozh.github.io/ascii-tables and choose the "Header Location:" of "Spreadsheet" for pasting into Stackoverflow in a nice formatted way that includes the excel A...Z, 1...N column and row headers. – JNevill Dec 14 '18 at 17:08
  • @JNevill - Yeah, I can put the Excel info in Word (or whatever), then paste to SO. Coming straight from Excel seems to throw it off. Thanks for the link to that page, looks quite helpful! – BruceWayne Dec 14 '18 at 17:10
  • 3
    @BruceWayne: Office programs typically put data on the clipboard in multiple formats, often including images, just in case. – Nathan Tuggy Dec 14 '18 at 17:10
  • 1
    @NathanTuggy - Then perhaps SE (or SO generally) made a change to the way data is pasted? I was able to paste from Excel without issue until recently. I can't remember if it coincides with the re-formatting of the "Upload" box SO did, or not. – BruceWayne Dec 14 '18 at 17:12
  • @BruceWayne: Yeah, they added image pasting about that time, so I'm pretty sure that's the problem. – Nathan Tuggy Dec 14 '18 at 17:12
  • @NathanTuggy but what's odd, if my data is copied as an image, why won't SO simply accept the image? Or as you said, does my copy exist as two types (data & image) at the same time? – BruceWayne Dec 14 '18 at 17:16
  • 1
    @BruceWayne: From the screenshot, it looks like you could hit Add Picture after the initial dialog pops up to upload it immediately. The flow is still a little wonky, though, as it led you down another path that then disables that. – Nathan Tuggy Dec 14 '18 at 17:19
  • 8
    Hitting "Add Picture" does work: i.stack.imgur.com/wYrRI.png It's a little worrying though as we are always pestering SO posters to paste their data as text so we can replicate. This new "Feature" is going to give them an easier workflow to bad behavior. – JNevill Dec 14 '18 at 17:21
  • @NathanTuggy - Good call. But, as JNevill mentions, I can hit "Add Picture" and the data will paste ...as an image. But we want to paste as Text. – BruceWayne Dec 14 '18 at 17:36
  • 1
    You can also use Ctrl+Shift+V to paste as plain text, which works correctly. – animuson ModStaff Dec 14 '18 at 17:36
  • 9
    Picture should be the last option, not the first, when choosing among available clipboard data types – user1228 Dec 14 '18 at 19:30
  • Cross-site post on Meta.SO: Copy/paste from MS Word triggers image upload. – Sebastian Simon Mar 29 '19 at 0:07
  • 1
    They should just remove the image copy/paste until they can fix copy pasting from excel/word/libreoffice. Could also add an option to let the user select pasting as data or upload to imugr.... – pyCthon May 27 '19 at 16:16
3

Same bug report on Meta Stack Overflow has been declined back in September 2019 with the following reasoning:

We are not going to be working on a fix for this at the time being. Seems that it is only happening with Word for Mac. And there is a good workaround in place as well (see the accepted answer below). So given that, and the other things in our pipeline, this is going to be a . Sorry.

Improve this answer
2
  • 1
    Interesting, as this is happening to me in Windows, not Mac. Perhaps it's an Office-wide issue...? – BruceWayne Apr 21 '20 at 20:47
  • @Bruce might be, worth pinging Yaakov on the MSO report and ask to reconsider the rejection. – Shadow Wizard Wearing Mask V2 Apr 21 '20 at 23:27

You must log in to answer this question.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged .