Cannot Select Text in the PDF Attachment Viewer
Categories
(Thunderbird :: General, defect)
Tracking
(Not tracked)
People
(Reporter: WoofGrrrr, Unassigned)
Details
Attachments
(2 files)
TB_PDF_TAB_TEXT_DOUBLE-CLICK_POPUP.png
User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64; rv:147.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/147.0
Steps to reproduce:
I double-clicked on a PDF attachment to open it.
It opened in a Tab.
I tried to drag across some text to select it.
I also tried to double-click on some text.
I also clicked on the ">>" icon at the top-right of the viewer to see a menu. I saw "Text Selection Tool". It seemed to selected. I tried selecting something else (Hand tool.) Then I selected "Text Selection Tool" again.
Actual results:
sometimes nothing happens
sometimes I see a "forbidden" (circle with slash) cursor
When double-click, or sometimes when I release the mouse button after a drag, I see a popup with two icons: comment & highlight
No matter what I tried, I could not select text.
Expected results:
I should be able to drag-across or double-click on text to select it and then be able to copy it to the clipboard.
I had to save the document to disk, open it, and copy the text from there.
Selecting text and then copying to the clipboard used to work. Quite recently. As recently as Exactly One Month Ago at least.
The doc I have at the moment is a bill containing personal info, else I would attach it.
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Reporter | |
Comment 2•7 months ago
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Windows 11 Pro 25H2 x86_64. Sorry, I should have said.
Maybe it's something about the PDF doc?
I will check into others
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Comment 3•7 months ago
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Hello!
I have tried but could not reproduce this issue on to TB 147.0 (20260108190847), 140.7.0esr(20260109054016) and latest daily 149.0a1( 20260119094159) on Win 11 Version 24H2( OS Build 26100.6899) and Win 10.
I had configured 3 accounts in Tb, all accounts have multiple pdf attachments.
Opened an email double clicked on a pdf attachment, opened in a new Tab, clicked on a word and moved the mouse to the right, the word was selected, double clicked on a word, same behavior the word was selected, pressed ctrl+c and copied the text selected onto a new message no problems were encountered.
Opened a new message with another pdf attachment, double clicked on the pdf, the pdf was opened in a new tab, on the pdf viewer tab I clicked on >> Text selection Tool option was enabled clicked on it went back to the pdf and selected all the content in the page and copied onto a new message no problems were encountered.
As i saw the reporter stated that the pdf attachment that was used was a bill, i also tried and no problems were encountered, the text could be selected and copied without any issues.
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Reporter | |
Comment 4•7 months ago
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I am confused that I can see this problem so very easily, yet others cannot.
I am using Thunderbird 147.0 on Windows 11 Pro 24H2. I am on the Release Channel.
I have many emails that have PDF attachments, and every single one of them that I have double-clicked to open and then have tried to select text in the newly-opened Thunderbird PDF viewer tab has had these same problems.
When I double-click on text in the PDF document, I get a popup menu with two icons just below the text, but sometimes nothing happens.
I will attach a screenshot of the popup.
When I drag the cursor across some text in the document, almost always nothing happens, but sometimes, when I release the mouse button, the same menu with two icons pops up. And sometimes I see a not-allowed (circle with slash) icon while I drag.
When I save an attachment to disk and open it with Acrobat, I do not see these problems.
This used to work. I have done it many times in the past. I stopped very recently. A month ago it worked. I think it stopped working with 147.
Is Thunderbird (always) using an internal PDF viewer? Might I somehow have configured it to use an external viewer?
I need to copy information from these documents and paste it elsewhere. It's really painful to have to save the file to disk just to open it and copy text.
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Comment 5•7 months ago
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Reporter | |
Comment 6•7 months ago
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Reporter | |
Comment 7•7 months ago
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I restarted in Troubleshoot mode but only checked to disable All Add-Ons and could NOT reproduce the problem.
I shutdown and restarted, disabled ALL Add-Ons, and COULD reproduce it. Even after restarting yet again. Still NO Add-Ons enabled.
I then shutdown, renamed both userChrome.css and userContent.css, and restarted and I and STILL COULD reproduce it.
What else does Troubleshooting Mode with ALL extensions disabled do that merely disabling all add-ons and disabling both userChrome.css and userContent.css NOT do?
Very confusing.
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Reporter | |
Comment 8•7 months ago
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I give up. I have reconfigured to use Acrobat to view PDF files.
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Comment 9•7 months ago
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Troubleshoot mode also disables hardware acceleration. You can try that separately in the settings. But would be odd if it's due to that.
In the dialog that comes up, you can also choose to reset some persisted states.
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Comment 10•7 months ago
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I disabled hardware acceleration and that didn't help.
I will try also disabling all add-ons and try again,
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Comment 11•7 months ago
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No Add-Ons are enabled except the built-in "Dark" Theme.
Hardware Acceleration is not enabled.
I can readily reproduce the problem with every PDF attachment I have tried.
Windows 11 Pro 25H2. No updates available.
Thunderbird Release Channel 147.0. No updates available.
I wonder if there is something in in my Config Editor settings... I can export "modified" settings and attach the result, if that helps, but there are so many things that Thunderbird itself has modified, and over the years, so many things that I have modified as well... Too bad there's not something to show only USER-Modified values.
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Comment 12•2 days ago
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Windows 11
version 140.14.1esr
I have various pdf to test.
It seems to depend on how pdf was created.
In most that look like they were created as text document eg: Invoice or text document - there is no problem, all works as expected.
I can select text when using 'Preview in Thunderbird'.
I have a pdf which was created as a brochure eg: house sale type.
In that pdf I cannot select anything using 'Preview in Thunderbird', but I can select text using 'Use Adobe Acrobat (default)
I then did the Troubleshoot mode and did not find any improvement, so went back to normal
retested - selected 'Text Selection tool'
Hover over area - now I get the change of cursor to a text - I can select text - right click and select Copy and now it works as expected.
Resized window - Now it has stopped again.
Later it only works on page 3 of 4.
It seems to be very much a hit and miss. Sometimes I get the text cursor icon, so I can select text and sometimes I cannot.
In beta 155.0b3
Using 'Preview in Thunderbird'
I had to make sure no options are selected, then use the >> to select the 'Text Selection Tool'
Now I can select some text, up pops the small area containing the comment and highlight options - ignore this - right click on the selected text and you should get the small menu drop down offering 'Copy, Paste, Select all' - where you can select 'Copy'.
This seems more stable.
Description
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