Mar 20, 2010

If you are working with Dreamweaver CS4 and find that you have weird select – copy – paste problems, then read on.

Ever been working in code view and find that trying to highlight and copy any text (either ctrl-c or right click>copy) suddenly results in the entire page or code block you are working in being selected?   Yeah, me to – and it has made me FURIOUS, going on 3 or 4 months now.

The only way I was able to get it to STOP doing that was to click somewhere in the code editor and make a change in the doc – like clicking Enter to make a new blank line and then deleting it again.  Once the file was “touched” like that, copy again worked correctly.   While this worked, it was EXTREMELY annoying, because it happened every single time I opened a bit of code that I wanted to grab a snippet from.  Constantly clicking and making changes in files that I really didn’t want to change, only to start forgetting which ones I really wanted to save…  Oh, how I loathed the day I upgraded from CS3!

Well, I’m glad to announce that I found a way to fix the stupid problem – not permanently – but at least I don’t have to use the stupid file change method anymore.

It appears that the problem is due to “workspace” issues.  A CS4 Workspace is essentially a screen layout configuration that you can customize and save and return to at any point.  For example, you may want certain windows open when you are writing your code, and other windows open when you are debugging the code, etc.  CS4 ships with several neat Workspaces out of the box – I’ve primarily used the “Dual Screen” workspace for most of my time in the app.  Well apparently something in the Workspace config gets borked and causes this problem.

To Fix the Problem:

• First, select the “Classic” Workspace and let the windows reconfigure themselves.  The easiest way to do this is to select a new Workspace from the upper right hand side of the top of your Dreamweaver window, as seen below.

Its Easy to Change your Workspace

• Second, change back to your preferred workspace (like “Dual Screen” in my case) and the problem will be gone!

Now, be advised that it may show up again in a few weeks or a few days, or never – I don’t know.  It doesn’t seem to be consistent – but it will at least give you some peace while you try to bang out that next web masterpiece.

A final thought – it may even work to select the Reset option – seen above as “Reset ‘Dual Screen’”, but I haven’t tested that myself personally.  Drop a note if it you try that and works for you!

Happy coding!