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User profile for user: kashif_aulakh
kashif_aulakh Author
User level: Level 1
4 points

Copying and Pasting Numbers Tables.

Hello Folks! I have been facing a problem since macOS Sequoia. Back on MacOS Ventura & Sonoma, I used to copy Tables or Selected Rows/Columns and paste them into other apps like WhatsApp and Messenger, and it used to be pasted as an Image, which was a great convenience for sending price lists to customers. But since macOS Sequoia, the copied Tables or Selected Rows /Columns are pasted as just Text into Other apps and not as an image. Has Apple changed something regarding this, or is this a bug in macOS Sequoia?

Mac mini, macOS 15.1

Posted on Oct 30, 2024 11:20 AM

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User profile for user: Camelot
Camelot
User level: Level 9
55,305 points

Posted on Nov 1, 2024 10:44 AM

In digging in with ClipboardViewer.app (part of the Xcode developer tools), it's clear that Numbers v14.2 puts no image version of the copied data on the clipboard in Sequoia (15.2).


Numbers does copy the data in multiple formats, namely plain-text, RTF, and HTML (which you might expect), as well as PDF and WebArchive (which I didn't).

Oddly, the clipboard contains markers for PNG and TIFF data, but these are empty.


Clearly, when you paste the data, the target app gets to choose which version of the data they want to accept, which is why some applications (e.g. Preview, Pages) show a formatted table (from either the RTF or PDF formats?). However, WhatsApp appears unable to process these formats and falls back to the plaintext version.


What I don't have is an older OS version to compare to. I suspect the OP is correct that previous versions used to include JPG and/or TIFF versions of the table, but no longer. Whether that's by design or fault I cannot tell.


Right now screenshot-to-clipboard is probably the shortest path.

Feedback - Numbers - Apple is probably the long-term solution, asking Apple to restore this functionality.


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Copying and Pasting Numbers Tables.

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