Apple Mail Text Editing Weirdness

TidBITS Talk
1

Hi,

iMac (Retina 4K, 21.5-inch, Late 2015)
Apple Wireless Keyboard, Magic Mouse
High Sierra 10.13.6
Running Mail 11.5…

I’ve raised the issue about Mail’s drag and drop behavior before and the resolution was to be more careful/purposeful with the mouse click, but now I’m seeing a change. When I try to use drag and drop on selected text 1 of 3 things may happen:

  1. It may actually drag and drop the selected text,
  2. It may copy and paste the selected text, so the text appears 2x, (This is new and annoying.)
  3. As soon as the mouse button is pressed the selection area turns off as if to simply place the cursor at the insertion point.

I’m using an Apple wireless mouse and sometimes the touch sensitivity seems finicky, but no matter how carefully I try I can’t be assured of the desired behavior.

Should I just file a report at Apple, if so, what’s the best way to do it?

Any thoughts would be appreciated.

2

The “sometimes duplicate drag-and-drop text” bug has been around for many years and many versions of Mail. In my experience, it is unique to Mail.

The lose-selection-when-clicking-to-drag problem is also longstanding, and also occurs in Safari and I think I have seen it in other programs as well.

Though both occur often enough to impair production, I have not succeeded in establishing conditions where they can reliably be reproduced.

–Ron

3

I have experienced both of these bugs frequently and in Apps other than Mail, both have been around a long time.

4

While I’ve never encountered this phenomenon, it may be because I usually use copy and paste rather than drag-n-drop. Might help and is certainly less frustrating than using a fickle hardware method. :smiley: