Skip to main content
New Participant
May 27, 2021
Answered

Can't copy paste text from other apps into After Effects

  • May 27, 2021
  • 51 replies
  • 48426 views

I can't copy paste text from other apps into After Effects tekst layer. Not from InDesign or Pages or any other app. 

Correct answer Rameez_Khan

UPDATE: This issue has been fixed in After Effects 18.4.1.

 

Thanks,

Rameez

51 replies

jkdaniels
New Participant
July 24, 2021

Hi guys,

 

Since the last update, 18.4.0 (build 41) it hapenning with me too.
The only way to works is to close the AE, then copy text from the app (word, google docs, etc) and only opens AE after this.

New Participant
July 23, 2021

I just upgraded to the latest version of AF on my PC and I cant copy and paste from any word based app to AF. Do you know why this is?

New Participant
July 23, 2021

I had the same issue.  Just downgraded back to the previous version and I am able to copy and paste again.

Community Manager
July 22, 2021

To follow up on the questions John asked:

1. Are any of your experiencing this running any startup scripts or other AE extensions?
2. What 3rd Party AE plugins are installed?
3. What are you AE "Type" Preferences set to?

4. Are you having the same issue pasting text into Premiere Pro?

Inspiring
July 23, 2021

Mine is a fairly clean/fresh install;

 

1.

Dojo_Shifter_v2.0.jsxbin

 

2.

FXConsole.plugin

depth_of_field.plugin

Animation Composer 3

Motion-3

 

3.

Text Engine: Latin
Font menu: Small / 14

Resolve Fonts: no checkmark

 

4.

Premiere not installed / used

New Participant
July 22, 2021

Same here. MBP 16in Intel i9. Can copy into the search bar at the top right of toolbar, but can't go into a text later and update text in that layer. Such a weird issue, but defintiely slowing things down.

New Participant
July 22, 2021

I can copy from an existing text layer to the same or another text layer and that works fine, but taking from anywhere but AE, still doesn't work.

duanel87903666
New Participant
July 21, 2021

Yes, same issue here on AE beta v22 on my m1 MacBook pro. I can copy and paste within the app itself but not from outside the app into AE.  I can't spell so please help Adobe. 🙂 

davidb28758509
New Participant
July 21, 2021

I'm having the exact same problem ever since I upgraded to AE version 18.4.0

Inspiring
July 21, 2021

I was wondering if the recent update caused this issue. But this thread was started ages ago. If I experiece this again on my next project I will wind it back a version to see if that fixes the issue.

New Participant
July 21, 2021

I cant seem to paste text into after effects. When I try copying(right clicking) and pasting from any other program it wont paste into the text box Ive created in after effects. Ive tried deleting preferences and right clicking to copy but to no avail.

Inspiring
July 21, 2021

Is this something you were able to do before? I paste text into AE all the time with no issues. Are you making sure the text box is active with a blinking cursor first? Another thing I'll see sometimes is that a leading space or carriage return will be copied and pasted which pushes the text out of view of the text box. So it's possible your text is there but just hidden outside the bounds of the box. To get around this sometimes I'll just quickly paste the text into the Windows search bar (or Spotlight on macOS) just to get a plain text with no formatting version of the text and then I'll cut and paste it back into AE. 

 

If none of these things work, can you post a screen recording of your whole screen showing the process?

New Participant
July 21, 2021

Hi David. Ive been able to do it before no problem. I can only copy existing text from within After Effects comps. Cant copy and paste from external programs. When I copy and paste into the search bar it looks fine - but wont paste into AE.

JohnColombo17100380
Community Manager
Community Manager
June 29, 2021

Hi @Napstudio@jeffsarge, and @swaite-2,

Thank you all for reporting this issue. We have not been able to reproduce this issue on macOS 11.4 with either the latest release version ( v18.2.1 ) or the latest Beta version. It would be very helpful if you could make and share a screen recording of an attempt to copy & paste text from any of the listed apps. Some additional answers that may help us track this down:

  • What After Effects version are you experiencing this issue in?
  • Is pasting disabled only when trying to paste into Text layers or is it also not pasting into other AE text fields like the Project panel's search or when renaming project items or layers?
  • Is the keyboard shortcut for Paste also not working or only the menu item?
  • Does copying text within After Effects itself show any different behavior?
  • Does the text contain special characters?
  • What language is macOS set to and what language is AE set to?

 

Thank you all very much for any further info you can offer, I hope we can get to the root cause of this issue.

- John, After Effects Engineering Team

Inspiring
July 21, 2021

I am also having the same issue.

2015 Intel Mac (11.4).

AE 18.4.0.

 

Copying the text "Health Goals" from a PDF. Paste into text doc fine. Does not paste into after effects text frame (nothing appears). Copy different text inside AE "QWERTY" and this text pastes ok. Go back to text doc and copy "Health Goals" again. Paste in AE and "QWERTY" shows instead. Created adjustment layer, renamed with paste and it shows "Health Goals" as expected.

 

Really killing productitivty. 

New Participant
June 28, 2021

Agree. On a Mac (m1 ) and cant copy. Insanely frustrating.