New Copy/Paste Functionality with Google Docs

[TrishaMeyer1]

I was really excited to see that the (delayed) copy/paste feature for images was now available, but when I tested it, I couldn't get it to work with Google Docs. I could copy from a web page or an MS Word file, but when I tried to copy from a Google Doc and then paste to the RCE, nothing happened. I don't otherwise have any issues copying from Google Docs and pasting elsewhere. I also have no trouble copying TEXT from a Google Doc to the RCE; it is only images that are giving me trouble.

Does anyone know if this is an expected behavior? Is it something specific to Google, or is it possibly an account setting at my institution? 

A bit more info: If I copy an image from a website to a Google Doc and then try to copy from the Google Doc to the Canvas RCE, it does not work. But I can copy the same image directly from the website to Canvas. So something is happening to the image file when it is placed in the Google Doc.

We have many teachers who have all their content on Google Docs and may not have the original source images anymore. Being able to copy directly from a Google Doc to the RCE would be ideal.

[wyelearning]

Currently the RCE image support only handles one file at a time and an copy/pasted section from Google Docs could have multiple images in it which would all need uploading at the same time.

I would expect Instructure to also have to add some support for handling content like this from the clipboard so while it's technically possible to support I would expect them to mention this in their release notes if and when they support it. So far I haven't seen anything mention that it's specifically supported.

[TrishaMeyer1]

Hi @wyelearning ,

Thank you for your reply. I was copying/pasting only one image at a time. I could copy/paste from a website to Canvas and from MS Word to Canvas. I even copied an image from a Google Doc to Word and then to Canvas, and that worked. But I could not copy straight from the Google Doc to Canvas.

I'm not sure if it's a Google security setting or a Canvas bug. Or did MS Word somehow "compress" multiple layers from Google into a single image? As far as I know it was just one image, but I suppose it could have had hidden layers.

[TrishaMeyer1 · Accepted solution]

I learned today that images copied from Google Drive files copy only to the internal clipboard and not to the web clipboard. How did I not know this?! I guess it's the result of being "hidebound" in Google for so long. So items cannot copy/paste directly from a Google Doc to Canvas. (Text works, but not images.) I wasn't aware previously because Canvas required me to upload an image anyway. Now that Canvas has enabled Copy/Paste (and Drag/Drop) for images, I learned something new.