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

[ITfee]

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 ...

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?

[rémid18650607]

For me, it will be the first and last time I'm using this ADE, designers completely forgot to think about the user. Impossible to copy indeed

[SIHDHS]

2024 and they still haven't fixed it smh....

[Bayoo37623573tkzw]

Guess the message is: Don't buy anything Adobe. Corel. GIMP. Lots of options.

[diana_4722]

Just checking back in to see if anyone has found a work around. I've tried the several methods mentioned throughout this post, but nothing has worked for me (and my book allows copying).

[p_1767]

Same problem. Would sometimes copy, sometimes not, sometimes copy different text to which I'd selected. I found an answer: use other software. I used Calibre and it works.

[loyal_mentor7890]

I thought I fixed it, but I didn't. 

But I just found a hack... it's a few steps, so it's only worth it if you really want to copy the text.

1. Take a screen shot of the text

2. Drop it into Google Translate (image)

3. Copy the "translated" text into a google doc... it will copy over the text with no formatting issues.