Can not copy text from epub in Adobe Digital Editions and paste in e.g. Word

Forum|Forum|9 years ago
August 4, 2016
15 replies
59862 views

There are several threads in this support forum asking all likely the same question, how to copy text passages from an epub opened in Adobe Digital Editions (ADE) to another application or text editor like Word, Notepad, Open Office ...

Copying from adobe digital editions

Re: Copying text to my term papers. Ctrl+C doesn't work. Help!!

Problems with Copy/Paste This question is Not Answered. no longer copy text and paste into another document? I was able to a minute ago... I've tried closing and re-opening. I am able to highlight the text and make notes but the copy function is no lo

how do I copy text from an epub book?

Digitl Edition EBook copy text option not available

... but remain unanswered. That's a little odd, due to the fact that it seems to be an issue for a bunch of people.

Is it just impossible or a bug in ADE?

I use latest version ADE 4.5.1 on Windows 7. The tested epubs have no DRM. And they are not blocked by Windows.

What I found out so far, if I open the same epub in an older version (ADE 3.0) I can copy and paste text without any problems. But if I open it in ADE 4.5.1 I can only copy once and then the option is greyed out in the context menu (also ctrl + c doesn't work). So for every copy paste I need to reopen the ebook. So it is useless for scientific work, where you need to cite a lot from different books.

Is there a workaround or will there be a patch from Adobe? Or can someone suggest a similar eReader application for desktop users?

Show previous replies

J

jeffreye5602337

Participant

It's 2019 and still an issue. You think they would have fixed this after 3 years.

nataliec14906168

Participant

So true, this is SUPER frustrating. I will NEVER buy this online text nonsense again.

P

philm55460753

Participant

9 months later and it is still broken. BUT, I found a work-around that Adobe themselves have posted: Copying with Ctrl+C sometimes fails (Adobe Digital Editions 1.x)

Press and hold the Ctrl key.
Press the C key.
Release the Ctrl key.
Release the C key.

Be sure to follow it exactly and it works. Being a programmer myself, all I can say is (in my best Yoda voice)....'How embarrassing. How em-bar-ras-sing'.

M

MrChambo

Participant

I still cannot make this work. Any other ideas?

M

MrChambo

Participant

I actually think that it was because I had not created a user before I authorized ADE. I made the user to post here, uninstalled and reinstalled it, then authorized it with my new user and the workaround worked like a charm!