Unable to copy text/data from serial monitor - Arduino IDE 1.8.5

Hi,

I recently upgraded my Arduino IDE to 1.8.5 and since upgrading I haven't been able to copy data/text from the serial monitor. Usually I would just go CTRL-A, CTRL-C and then CTRL-P to paste my data into an excel spreadsheet but now when I try and do this it just pastes blank data into excel and it appears that I'm not copying anything. I have tried to paste this data into a text-file also and it also didn't work.

I have tested my code on others computers and it works fine (they have a different Arduino IDE version to me so maybe this is the problem) so I would like to know if anyone else is experiencing this issue on Arduino IDE 1.8.5? If not, can someone please assist me on how to fix this?

Thanks.

At least on Windows, CTRL-P is the shortcut for print, not paste. Did you mean CTRL-V?

I was able to reproduce the problem with Arduino IDE 1.8.5 but not consistently. This was how I did it:

  • Upload sketch that periodically prints to the Serial Monitor
  • Open Serial Monitor
  • Uncheck "Autoscroll"
  • Click on the Serial Monitor output window
  • Ctrl+A
  • Wait for another print to be done
  • Ctrl+C
  • Switch to a program that lets you paste
  • Ctrl+V - nothing is pasted

When I was able to do Ctrl+A, Ctrl+C before new prints were done to the Serial Monitor the issue did not occur.

Unfortunately after I restarted the Arduino IDE the problem did not still occur.

Are you able to consistently reproduce the issue? If so, please provide a minimal, complete set of steps to reproduce the issue.

The next step would be to test with the beta build of the IDE:

to see if the problem still occurs or if it was caused by a bug that has already been fixed. Since I can't consistently reproduce the issue I have no way of knowing whether the issue not occurring in the beta build for me indicates that it's fixed or only that the problem just didn't happen to occur during that test.

The bug was previously reported here:

but that was using Arduino IDE 1.6.12. After that user updated to Arduino IDE 1.8.1 the problem went away so the issue was closed.

Hi pert,

Thank you for all of your help. Yes you're correct about my typo, I did mean CTRL-V instead of CTRL-P.

After reading your post I tried again and for some reason it worked. I think the issue with what I was doing was because I was trying to copy all of the data as it was still printing.

Once I had the data I needed I would pull out the USB from my computer to stop the connection and the serial monitor from printing more data. Then when I would try and select all (CTRL-A), copy the data (CTRL-C) and paste the data (CTRL-V) it would then just paste blank text. Maybe as I was pulling the USB out the serial monitor was trying to do the new print???

I'm not experiencing the issue anymore for some unknown reason but if I experience this problem again I will try the beta build.

Thanks again for all of your help.

It's quite a frustrating bug. I was actually surprised when I was able to reproduce it on the first try after reading your post because I have definitely copied things from the Serial Monitor in the past without problems and I remember trying to reproduce it at the time of that bug report.

If we can find a set of steps to reliably reproduce the issue in the beta IDE version I will reopen that bug report. I suspect the problem will still occur in the beta IDE since there was no attempt to fix it at the time of the report. I the developers can't reproduce the error then they are not likely to make fixing it a priority.

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jfuller:
Hi,

I recently upgraded my Arduino IDE to 1.8.5 and since upgrading I haven't been able to copy data/text from the serial monitor. Usually I would just go CTRL-A, CTRL-C and then CTRL-P to paste my data into an excel spreadsheet but now when I try and do this it just pastes blank data into excel and it appears that I'm not copying anything. I have tried to paste this data into a text-file also and it also didn't work.

I have tested my code on others computers and it works fine (they have a different Arduino IDE version to me so maybe this is the problem) so I would like to know if anyone else is experiencing this issue on Arduino IDE 1.8.5? If not, can someone please assist me on how to fix this?

Thanks.

Hi, I had the same problem and managed to solve it, I will share my solution.

Marking everything with CTRL + A will not work, apparently there is some error when selecting from the beginning or from the first line.

The solution would be to select from the second line to the end, you can use the shift + click at the end to mark everything, the autoscroll option must be disabled

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