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662

answers:

6

This is driving me crazy. I'm not going to take it anymore. I'm going to ask, even at the risk of eternal public humiliation! (If it's something really obvious or that I've done to the system myself).

For reasons I've never quite had the patience to work out, every so often the form I'm working on in Delphi 2007's visual form editor goes 'pseudo-read-only'; I can add new components to the form, I can move/resize existing ones (and change any properties in the Object Inspector), and I can select a component and 'copy' it to the clipboard.

But I'm completely unable to cut a component from the form, or paste a new copy down. I don't believe it's to do with the 'Lock Controls' Edit menu option as I can toggle this on or off and it has the effect it's supposed to - this disappearance of Cut & Paste happens on the right-click context menu, from the keyboard and from the main Edit menu - it's as if the form has become read only to thing to do with the clipboard.

If I close the form in the IDE and then reopen it, everything starts working fine again (just as D1, D3, D5 and D7 always did for me, previously).

I'm not going mad, as I'm sure I read something about why this happens on a newsgroup once and it's caught me out from time to time many many times in the last few months, but I've failed to find the newsgroup reference this evening and I've decided that, as more and more Delphi users seem to be making use of StackOverflow, it was worth asking here.

Help - when I'm doing lots of form-work it drives me absolutely mad!

+2  A: 

I'm using copy/paste "desing" a lot, but they never went away.

Are you using some other IDE addins that mandle with copy/paste?

dmajkic
robsoft
I also have GExperts installed but many of the menu/IDE/editor enhancements are off (I mostly use it for the GREP search tools).I'll turn these off for a few days to see if it helps, but I'm sure I read somewhere about how something in D2007 itself causes this.Nick Hodges, are you reading?! :-)
robsoft
+1  A: 

Check that other apps can use the clipboard too. Sometimes I am paused in the middle of a clipboard operation in my app, which stops other apps opening the clipboard. Can be confusing!

mj2008
That's a good suggestion - thanks! I run the machine as a VM under VMware Fusion on the Mac and it's possible that Fusion (which shares the clipboards between Mac and PC, and is usually brilliant) is sometimes screwing things up. I'll turn off the clipboard sharing for a few days and try it. Thanks!
robsoft
Heh - only just realised that this is you, Matt. Sorry for any confusion caused on Cix. :-)
robsoft
I've had VMWare do funny stuff with my clipboard on occasion too. It usually works great . . .
Jim McKeeth
+1  A: 

I think it is a known bug in the IDE, but I can't seem to find any references to it. I also have experienced this problem. You might want to try IDE Fix Pack, although it does not claim to fix this problem.

Lars Truijens
Brilliant - I was sure I'd seen something about it somewhere in the past! I'll look at the fix pack too - many thanks!
robsoft
+2  A: 

you can try to download the clipboard monitor application to see if anything is messing with your cut/paste. I have noticed simular problems when running in a VM, the VM gets confused as to what is in the clipboard and won't let me cut/paste again until I go back to my host application open something else (notepad works fine) and copy something fresh. I think thats more a problem of the other clipboard monitoring applications on my system than anything else.

skamradt
I am beginning to think it could be a VM/clipboard interaction, although I've not noticed it with any other applications that I run in the VM (and I work in VMs all day long, running Office and productivity apps as well as Delphi).
robsoft
I've given it more time and the problem hasn't arisen again since I stopped Fusion from sharing the clipboard.Although that's a pain (because it's damn useful), I guess that it's probably not a Delphi issue (until it happens again) so I'll let this go. :-)
robsoft
Just to update this, it wasn't just due to Fusion I think, but since I've turned off all other clipboard sharing/management stuff it seems to be better. I still expect it to happen again any day soon. :-)
robsoft
+1  A: 

hey robsoft,

did u ever get an answer on this? Am having same problem....

robsoft
A: 

I think you should try the Desktop Settings. I had the same issue and after changing the Setting to Debug, Cut/Copy started working.

Babu