Often times when I want to copy and paste text (usually in Word), if I copy and paste something, the previous text is pasted instead of the most recent selection. I often have to press Cmd+C at least twice to actually copy what is selected. Running El Cap and Office 2016 but I noticed this behavior in Yosemite and Office 2011 as well. A family of Microsoft word processing software products for creating web, email, and print documents. Locked Question. This question was migrated from the Microsoft Support Community. You can vote on whether it's helpful, but you can't add comments or replies or follow the question. I have the same problem and it bothered me for at least 2 years. Today I read some threads and finally figured out what is going on. We have to cmd+c twice because we use three fingers drag to select the contents that we want to copy! Try System perference -> Accessibility ->Mouse&Trackpad -> Trackpad Options, then uncheck Enable dragging. After doing this, we don't need to cmd+c twice, however, we disabled the three finger drag function. Hope this is helpful to people who suffer the same problem. Often times when I want to copy and paste text (usually in Word), if I copy and paste something, the previous text is pasted instead of the most recent selection. I often have to press Cmd+C at least twice to actually copy what is selected. Running El Cap and Office 2016 but I noticed this behavior in Yosemite and Office 2011 as well. Are you sure that the current open window has focus? What I mean by that is you have to make sure you've clicked in a specific window and made it the active window... we in the developer world call that having "focus." So the scenario is... you click on an open window and copy something from it, but you might need to click once to get the system to recognize that this new window is the window to fave "focus" or "attention" or whatever adverb you'd like to use. Once the window has focus the Operating System will recognize from where to place the selected text onto the system's clipboard. Then the same procedure applies when you go to paste the copied text into a new/different open window. Your first click tells the OS that you want this new window to be the active window, and your second click performs the action you selected.

Hope this helps Thank you for the advice. I joined the Insider Fast and posted the following. Powerpoint for mac(insider 15.39) - Microsoft Community https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/msoffice/forum/msoffice_officeinsider-mso_mac-msoinsider_ppoint/powerpoint-for-macinsider-1539/97fdbf1b-81dc-453b-902b-7b190ec8beb3 I wrote this message several times, but some one delete it each time, I don't know why. 15 additional answers Anonymous 2016-06-17T10:45:21+00:00 I found it had to do, in my very case at least, with the delay after selection (I use the built-in trackpad three finger movement)... see that after you select what you want to copy it takes about one second for the cursor to change from the selection "mode" to the pointer. While still in selection (that second delay) the app won't let you copy. I guess most people do the selection/cmd-c movement too fast and the app doesn't get it. I looked for a way of reducing the delay but found nothing (besides somebody saying it may be a bad idea for other reasons). BUT, if you, like me, have this problem WITH THE TRACKPAD MOVEMENT you could try getting used to do a fast tap (or click for the mentally impaired) right after selecting what you want; this will make the cursor turn immediately to pointer and then your cmd-c will work. Yep, not elegant AT ALL. Of course it would be great if somebody would take care of this and make it all easier, but yeah... thanks! 0 comments No comments Report I found it had to do, in my very case at least, with the delay after selection (I use the built-in trackpad three finger movement)... see that after you select what you want to copy it takes about one second for the cursor to change from the selection "mode" to the pointer. While still in selection (that second delay) the app won't let you copy. I guess most people do the selection/cmd-c movement too fast and the app doesn't get it. I looked for a way of reducing the delay but found nothing (besides somebody saying it may be a bad idea for other reasons). BUT, if you, like me, have this problem WITH THE TRACKPAD MOVEMENT you could try getting used to do a fast tap (or click for the mentally impaired) right after selecting what you want; this will make the cursor turn immediately to pointer and then your cmd-c will work. Yep, not elegant AT ALL. Of course it would be great if somebody would take care of this and make it all easier, but yeah... thanks! Anonymous 2015-11-13T12:14:14+00:00 this is a very real problem with Office 2016. the applications are NOT capturing Cmd+C on first click. this happens to me all of the time and only with Microsoft Office. however: if you Cntrl+C it ALWAYS works. why does Cntrl+C work in a native MAC app? If I believed in conspiracy theory, this feels like a holdover from the Microsoft/Apple Battle over keyboard shortcuts. This is a huge productivity problem. I was surprised this thread didn't have many more entries. ...j 0 comments No comments Report this is a very real problem with Office 2016. the applications are NOT capturing Cmd+C on first click. this happens to me all of the time and only with Microsoft Office. however: if you Cntrl+C it ALWAYS works. why does Cntrl+C work in a native MAC app? If I believed in conspiracy theory, this feels like a holdover from the Microsoft/Apple Battle over keyboard shortcuts. This is a huge productivity problem. I was surprised this thread didn't have many more entries.