Copy and Paste Bug

[Leo Hans]

Suddenly I cannot copy and paste from Illustrator to other apps (including Photoshop).

Pasting as a smart object in photoshop results in an empty smart object.

The clipboard is empty.

I tried with some squares and shapes and it works, but with more complex stuff it doesn't (and with stuff I used to copy & paste without issues before).

I tried emptying cache, deleting preferences, uninstalling and installing Illustrator again and still not working.

I even rolled back to the previous version without any luck.

I'm currently running 26.4.1 on my M1 Macbook Pro

[Anubhav Majumder]

Hello @Leo Hans,

Sorry to hear about this experience. Kindly confirm if the issue persists with other files. Also, does pasting as Layers help resolve the problem?

Looking forward to your response.

Thanks,

Anubhav 

[Leo Hans]

Hi. Not at all. Just started today.
It appears to be happening with the files I've have been working today. But even then, objects that were created before in the same file are able to copy and paste without issues.

This is really unfortunate while working

[Leo Hans · Accepted solution]

Ok, I found a solution.

Selecting all the artboards, copy & paste on a new document solves the issue. It appear to be the .ai file(s) damaged (plural since they were more than one with the same problem).

Now it works.
Really strange behavior

[Monika Gause]

Do you have anything installed in the system that "enhances" the clipboard?

[Leo Hans]

Yes, Unclutter. But no. that's not the issue for two reasons:
1) It hasn't been updated, so nothing changed.

2) I've already tried closing Unclutter just in case.

BTW googleing about this it appears to be not the first time Illustrator got this kind of behaviour.

[Y8RKD]

I have found that if I have Outlook open it stops me cutting and pasting in Illustrator.

The only way round I have found is to close Outlook while working in Illustrator.