Original Message:
Sent: Mon October 16, 2023 03:56 PM
From: Jon Peck
Subject: Cannot copy/paste from another program into syntax editor
Edit > Copy or Paste usually works for me, but it is certainly annoying. My understanding is that it is due to Statistics having a double clipboard in order to handle decimal points correctly when the SPSS locale setting is different from the OS decimal. Fixing that apparently is complicated, but I don't know the details.
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Original Message:
Sent: 10/16/2023 9:28:00 AM
From: Joe Twyman
Subject: RE: Cannot copy/paste from another program into syntax editor
I have also been encountering this problem for years, but have similarly noticed it becoming much more frequently a problem more recently. I have tried, Edit > Paste, Windows + V etc. etc. and nothing actually seems to solve the problem consistently. As I assume it is not something that is going to be fixed anytime soon I guess we just have to put up with it? As was said, not great for such expensive software.
The only workaround I have is to load the syntax files up in Notepad and edit there, only bringing them back into SPSS to run them. Very annoying and very inefficient, but a damn sight quicker than waiting for SPSS to actually do anything about it.
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Joe Twyman
Original Message:
Sent: Mon August 28, 2023 07:04 AM
From: Jos Blykers
Subject: Cannot copy/paste from another program into syntax editor
This ugly workaround worked for me.
I had Python code in Notebooks. Cut'n paste did not work, not with Ctrl-C / Ctrl-V nor with the menu-driven approach. Copied to MS Word to no avail. Then saved as txt-file and imported the txt-file as a dataset with one variable in SPSS. Then copied the lines of code from the Dataset to the Syntax page. The copy worked, minor editing remains.
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Jos Blykers
Original Message:
Sent: Mon August 14, 2023 02:45 PM
From: Jon Peck
Subject: Cannot copy/paste from another program into syntax editor
An earlier post discussed the cause of this problem, but I want to reiterate that if you use Edit > Copy instead of ctrl-C, the clipboard seems to work better.
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Original Message:
Sent: 8/11/2023 1:30:00 PM
From: Eva Ho Lam Yiu
Subject: RE: Cannot copy/paste from another program into syntax editor
Not sure if you've resolved this issue. I've been having the same issue and I was just randomly trying different things. If this happens again, try copying something from the Output window, and then copy what you actually want to copy from the external app and then paste into the syntax window. This worked for me just now.
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Eva Ho Lam Yiu
Original Message:
Sent: Thu May 11, 2023 08:21 AM
From: Chris Keran
Subject: Cannot copy/paste from another program into syntax editor
I have been having the same copy/paste issue described since at least back to v27 (I'm on v29 now), and the frequency seems to be increasing. The one additional context I would add is that after I copy something from OUTSIDE a syntax window (ctrl-c), when I paste into a syntax window (ctrl-v), it will often paste the last thing I had copied from WITHIN a syntax window. The only consistent solution I've found is to close and then restart SPSS. As described, this is a HUGE time waste.
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Chris Keran
Original Message:
Sent: Sat January 08, 2022 05:16 PM
From: Community Support Admin
Subject: Cannot copy/paste from another program into syntax editor
Dear Jon:
Nope, none of your suggestions work. I am usually trying to copy from Word 2016 to an SPSS syntax file, but without success. Can you think of anything else to do? This is very annoying when trying to annotate a syntax file or do other things, such as copy questionnaire responses into a VALUE LABELS command. Sometimes I am working on very complicated analyses with several open syntax files, databases, and output files. In order restore copy/paste, I have to close everything down and start over. Not great behavior from a $3,000 program, eh?
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