javascript execCommand("paste") not working

Question

document.execCommand("Paste") doesn't work! "Copy" and "cut" works fine.

var editor = document.getElementById("ta1");
editor.focus();
editor.select();
var successful = document.execCommand("Paste");  
var msg = successful ? 'successful' : 'unsuccessful';  
alert('Pasting text command was ' + msg);

This alerts "unsuccessful" on paste, but "successful" on copy and cut..

I use the "copy" another place on my webpage, and the whole thing works like a charm, but I need to get "paste" working as well..

I'm using Chrome (no extension, just a regular webpage). Any ideas?

Answer 1

For security reason, it is blocked in chrome. Even office 365 asks to their users to use shortcuts ctrl+c/ctrl+v instead of copy.

this function is only available for chrome extension now.

if the text you want to copy has to be paste on the same page then just store the text in a variable, you can then use the following command to paste

 document.execCommand('insertText' 

but you need to focus the textarea first

and to copy the selection https://developer.mozilla.org/fr/docs/Web/API/Window/getSelection

full example https://jsfiddle.net/bormat/9a8nuzse/2/

Answer 2

This is clearly mentioned in Mozilla Documentation of Document.execCommand() that:

paste

Pastes the clipboard contents at the insertion point (replaces current selection). Clipboard capability must be enabled in the user.js preference file. See 1.

1 Before Firefox 41, clipboard capability needed to be enabled in the user.js preference file. See A brief guide to Mozilla preferences for more information. If the command wasn't supported or enabled, execCommand was raising an exception instead of returning false.In Firefox 41 and later, clipboard capability are enabled by default in any event handler that is able to pop-up a window (semi-trusted scripts).