What to do if copy & paste is not working on your Mac

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I'm running Parallels 12 mac with Windows 10 and copy and paste is not working. I went more options and sync from either OS is selected (tried both ways with just Mac OS - neither work). Share mac clipboard is checked. Mac copies and pastes to the mac side only and windows copies and pastes to the windows side only - no sharing between the two.
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Copying and pasting is an easy and fast way to move text, images, and other objects from one document or app to another. Anyone who’s ever typed huge chunks of text will agree that the copy and paste functions are the best things ever invented. It’s also quite handy when typing complex combinations like PIN codes, serial numbers, passwords, etc. Copy and paste is a such frequently used function that if suddenly it stops working, you may feel really frustrated.

But no need to worry. There are a few simple ways to fix the problem and put your Mac back in working order. Let’s see.

Copy Paste not working? Three ways to fix the issue

Before solving the issue with the ways described below, you should first try restarting your Mac. A restart refreshes the contents of your system and often fixes many problems. If it doesn’t work out, check these solutions.

1. Use Activity Monitor

First of all, you need to close the app where the copy & paste function is not working properly. Then make sure to follow these steps:

Open Activity Monitor from your Applications > Utilities folder or launch it via Spotlight.
In the search box, type pboard.
Click on the pboard process and click X in the Activity Monitor toolbar.
Click on the Force Quit button.
Exit Activity Monitor.

Open the Mac app you’ve used and try to copy and paste the text or image again — it should work as expected.

It is impossible to copy content from some websites as they have turned on the copyright protection to ensure better security. You may overcome the limitation by copying the needed information from the source code or disabling JavaScript for your browser.

2. Use Terminal

If you prefer to use Terminal, do the following:

Open the Terminal from your Applications > Utilities folder or via Spotlight.
Type the following command: killall pboard
Press Enter.

This command will relaunch the pboard process which is the clipboard daemon for macOS. It should fix the issue. Now try the copy and paste command in any text editor, it should work properly.

3. Use CleanMyMac X

If you’re looking for an easier and more efficient way to solve the problem, try using CleanMyMac X. This application comes with many features to quickly optimize your system’s performance. You can download the free demo and check it out.

First of all, run a Smart Scan to scan your Mac for junk files and malware threats, and define suitable speedup tasks. During the Smart Scan, the app will clean up the system cache — corrupt caches are sometimes the cause of the copy and paste issue.

Once you’ve finished a Smart Scan, we recommend using the Updater tool. In a click, you can update all your apps to the latest available version and avoid software incompatibilities caused by outdated versions of your software.

Then head to the Maintenance tab and run maintenance scripts — a number of useful system optimizations. Explore other features of CleanMyMac X, and you’ll see how your computer can benefit from this application.

How to fix other Mac errors

Mac computers are known to be reliable and can run well for years after you take them out of the box. However, your Mac is not immune to bugs, malware, slowdowns, and other issues, and it’s up to you to keep your machine healthy.

To help you out, we’ve gathered all useful troubleshooting tips and tricks on our blog. Here you can find a lot of up-to-date articles and how-tos that contain answers to all your questions about macOS and your Mac. You can also subscribe to our newsletter (you’ll see the option at the bottom of the article), and once in a while, we’ll send you fresh articles and recent news.

Parallels For Mac Copy Paste Not Working

Well, this is how to solve the problem with the broken copy & paste function. But remember, to avoid various Mac errors, you should optimize your Mac on a regular basis. Take advantage of the app mentioned above — CleanMyMac X — and keep your computer clean and fresh, running at its best.

Thanks for reading! Stay tuned!

Dedication: The clipboard is the unifying concept behind cut, copy, and paste. The individual responsible for cut, copy, and paste, Larry Tesler, passed away this month. Larry wrote the preface to my book, Object-Oriented Programming for the Macintosh, and was the person who hired me at Apple so many, many years ago. The computing world lost an important pioneer, and this blog post is dedicated to his memory. You can read more about Larry in The New York Times and the Washington Post.

When it was first released in 1984, one of the defining features of the Macintosh user interface was the clipboard. The clipboard was great! You could copy any kind of data to it and then later paste that data into a new location. You could put text, graphics and entire documents or folders on the clipboard. Later on, you could put video clips, equations, spreadsheets and more on it. While the Mac was not the first computer with a clipboard—the Apple Lisa also had one—the Mac made the clipboard a widely known user interface (UI) concept.

There were, however, a couple of issues with the Mac clipboard. First, it only stored one piece of information at a time. Copy something else to the clipboard, and whatever was there before got removed. Second, it was invisible. The only way you could see what was on the clipboard was to paste the clipboard’s contents into a document. Lastly, the clipboard worked great on a single Mac, but there wasn’t any way to get the clipboard information to another Mac. Over the years, a variety of apps and extensions have tried to solve these issues, but none really caught on because none were as simple to use as the clipboard itself.

The Parallels engineers decided to solve these issues—the result is the new Clipboard History tool in Parallels® Toolbox for Mac. In this blog post, I’ll show you how to use this new tool. If you’re like me, you’ll find it so useful that you’ll set it to start up whenever you turn on your Mac.

The Clipboard History tool is one of forty tools in Parallels Toolbox for Mac (see Figure 1).

When running, it has a separate icon in the Mac menu bar—and when it’s open, its window shows you items that have been placed on the clipboard. Papers please mac. (Figure 2)

Video 1 (3 minutes) introduces the Clipboard History tool and shows its use on a single Mac:

Video 2 (1 minute 30 seconds) shows how Apple’s Handoff works with the Clipboard History tool on two Mac devices.

Parallels For Mac Copy Paste Not Working Free

Even though there is no Parallels Toolbox for the iPad, the Clipboard History tool can work with an iPad on the same network as your Mac. Video 3 (1 minute 30 seconds) shows an example of this:

Parallels For Mac Copy Paste Not Working Using

I hope these examples show you the power of Parallels Toolbox. If you’re a subscriber of a recent version of Parallels Desktop™ for Mac, Parallels Toolbox is available to you at no charge. If you don’t have Parallels Desktop, you can download a free 7-day trial of Parallels Toolbox.