1235454 - Undo paste of formatted text deletes too much and moves cursor

Status: NEW

(MailNews Core :: Composition, defect)

Description

[WBT]

Attachment: Bug demo Copying in formatted text.eml

When pasting formatted text into a bulleted list, then pressing CTRL+Z to Undo, it deletes the entire bullet (not just the text that was newly pasted), and moves the cursor to the start of the message. Additionally, a line break gets added.  
An example e-mail to test with is attached (Edit as New to demonstrate).    

Bug 261392 seems to be about Undo not doing anything; this one is about undo doing far too much.

Comment 1

[WBT]

Attachment: This is a sample document with formatted text.docx

Comment 2

[WBT]

Tested in v38.5.0 in Safe Mode.

Comment 3

[dominik.giger]

I habe the same Problem. Undo deletes the whole bullet point. Redo and undo don't work after this, as if the whole undo/redo history has been lost.

This means the data is lost and can not be recovered.

I can reproduce it by copying a link from zim (a wiki text editor application) into a thunderbird bullet point.

Thunderbird v45.3.0 on Ubuntu 16.04

Comment 5

[pupertest]

Oh come on guys! More than a year and this has not even been assigned. This is an information deleting bug, surely it should give it more priority. I just lost a huge block of text that I can't restore because the whole undo history is lost when it happens.

I confirm that this bug is very much not fixed as of v45.7.1 (Win32).

Comment 6

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

still fails for version 52?

Comment 7

[pupertest]

(In reply to Wayne Mery (:wsmwk, NI for questions) from comment #6)
> still fails for version 52?

It's definitely better in 52. Simple formatted text (for example copied from web page in Firefox) pastes and undo seems to work as expected. Hovewer, after pasting rich text from MS Office, after undo cursor disappears and sometime jumps to the beginning of the letter (it reappears after any symbol input or mouse click, but not with the cursor keys; one time I even managed to see cursor disappear right after pasting). 

There might still be other quirks. I'm not sure if another bug should be opened, or these issues are connected enough to investigate it here.

Comment 8

[WBT]

@Wayne Yes.  I tried this on 45.8.0 and the latest release 52.0.1 and saw the same behavior as described in the examples.

Comment 9

[pupertest]

Correction. Using 52.0.1, when pasting rich text, after an undo operation not only pasted text gets deleted, but also all text preceding pasted and after pasted, within the paragraph. So if I paste some rich text in the middle of String2 here:
String1
String2
String3

After undo I'm left with just
String1
String3
(and cursor sitting at the beginning, sometimes hidden)

Also, Redo operation doesn't work.

So, there are some changes, but it's not fixed at all...

Comment 10

[Ray Kremer]

Currently on TB 52.8.0 with Win 7, getting hit by this bug every now and then. I just lost an entire paragraph of text (no bullets as per the original description, just plain paragraphs) when I pasted in some formatted text (from MS Word), realized I wanted to paste it without the formatting, and hit control-Z.

As was mentioned, the redo command does not present as an option in these cases.

I've seen some TB bugs take years to get fixed before when it's something that only impacts users a small portion of the time, but please, somebody.

I'm willing to play around with different iterations of reproducing this, if that would be helpful in tracking down the problem.

Comment 11

[Kristian]

I use TB 52.9.1 32bit with Win 10 and have the same problem. Pasting some kind of formatted text and undoing the insertion deletes the whole paragraph rather than just the inserted text. This typically happens when I paste text from a web-site. An undo of this "complete-delete undo" is not available. TB and I have this problem since a long time and quite some text went into oblivion. A fix or a text-resurrection trick is highly appreciated.

Comment 12

[hansen_bjoern]

I am also using TB 52.9.1 (32-Bit) and this annoying bug is still there. 
I lose long email text due to this bug on a regular basis. This is very annoying. 
Usually, I use “ctrl + a” and “ctrl + c” before using "ctrl + z", because I never can be sure, not to lose my hole email text otherwise. Sometimes I forget about it and regret it immediately.
It is my impression that this bug only occurs after pasting formatted text. 
I hope this very old bug will be resolved sometime in the future. 
People complain about it for so long now.

Comment 14

[Adam Petrusek]

I am using TB 60.9.1 (64bit), and this very annoying problem is still there. It never occurred when messages were composed in plain text. However, sincel some months am forced to use frequently formatted emails (in HTML), and this bug happens from time to time - disappearance of the written text, no undo/redo possible.
Losing whole paragraphs of carefully formulated text is extremely frustrating.

Comment 15

[CJ]

4 years in and the bug persists. Just lost a large block of text with no means of retrieving it. Awesome.

Using 68.3.1 (32-bit)

Comment 16

[llombard]

same with 68.8.1

Comment 17

[mc]

The problem is still present in v. 79.0 (64-bit).
I think it may have something to do with different formats of paragraphs in email text. Instead of redoing the deletion of a few letters entire paragraph with this formatting is removed.

Comment 18

[hansen_bjoern]

Date: 10.05.2022
Thunderbird-Version: 91.9.0 (64-Bit)

... and it happened again:
I wrote an email, I pasted a short formatted text to the end of that email, I pressed "ctrl + z" (undo)
--> the whole email text was deleted and the whole undo/redo history as well, so the already written text is lost.