Search Support

Avoid support scams. We will never ask you to call or text a phone number or share personal information. Please report suspicious activity using the “Report Abuse” option.

Learn More

Pasting links into messages

more options

A recent Thunderbird update started pasting links as text with an underlying link. I prefer to see and paste the actual link: http://..... so recipients know that it is a link and can see where it goes.

I can get around the new "feature" by pasting with ctrl/shift/V, but I keep forgetting and have to erase the formatted link and start over.

Is there, or should there be, an option to specify how one wants to paste links?

Thanks!

A recent Thunderbird update started pasting links as text with an underlying link. I prefer to see and paste the actual link: http://..... so recipients know that it is a link and can see where it goes. I can get around the new "feature" by pasting with ctrl/shift/V, but I keep forgetting and have to erase the formatted link and start over. Is there, or should there be, an option to specify how one wants to paste links? Thanks!

Chosen solution

You also appear to be posting in the forum using Edge.

So I tried copy and paste from edge and guess what. It works as you describe. If using Firefox is does not. S I guess this is a "feature" of edge. Placing a "rich" copy of the data on the clipboard. So the solution could be as simple as use Firefox.

I am also unable to duplicate this using Chrome, so I guess this is something Microsoft added to their fork of Chromium they call Edge.

Looking at the options in Edge I see edge://settings/shareCopyPaste which appears to control the thing your complaining about but as I do not use edge, nor recommend it, all I can do is point to to what appears to be the answer and suggest you look at another browser, obviously my choice is Firefox at this time. My issue with Edge is not the browser, it is Microsoft. They keep updating things and re enabling "features" I have disabled for privacy or improved usage reasons. I struggle to keep up with change and new features, without having to review everything regularly to put them back how I want them.

Read this answer in context 👍 0

All Replies (4)

more options

as Ctrl+Shift+V is a keyboard shortcut of pasting, I really am struggling to see what your talking about. So perhaps lets start by how you create your links to copy and how you go about pasting them.

For simplicity I go to facebook, right click a link and select copy link. I open an email and select paste and I get a text link of the raw HTTPS: link. If I drag the link I get a HTML formatted link.

The same occurs is I copy and paste a URL from the toolbar of Firefox. If I drag the link to an email I get the formatted HTML version, so I guess that is what Firefox supplies to the drag function when the data is requested.

So my notional guess is you are not pasting, you are dragging and what the browser supplies to the drag action has changed.

more options

You are right that Ctrl+Shift+V works, but everything else in Windows that I am familiar with uses Ctrl+V. Right-clicking and selecting Paste also fails to paste the raw link.

What I typically do is select an address on the address bar of the browser and use Ctrl+C to copy it. I do not drag it.

I'd love to know how you get the raw link with a paste. It worked like that for many years, but not too many versions ago, it changed to paste the formatted link with Ctrl-V. I'm using Tbird version 78.10.

I can see how people might have different preferences, which is why I suggest an option to select formatted vs. raw format. Preferably, the default would be raw, to be compatible with Windows and traditional Thunderbird.

Thanks for your help.

Sam

more options

Chosen Solution

You also appear to be posting in the forum using Edge.

So I tried copy and paste from edge and guess what. It works as you describe. If using Firefox is does not. S I guess this is a "feature" of edge. Placing a "rich" copy of the data on the clipboard. So the solution could be as simple as use Firefox.

I am also unable to duplicate this using Chrome, so I guess this is something Microsoft added to their fork of Chromium they call Edge.

Looking at the options in Edge I see edge://settings/shareCopyPaste which appears to control the thing your complaining about but as I do not use edge, nor recommend it, all I can do is point to to what appears to be the answer and suggest you look at another browser, obviously my choice is Firefox at this time. My issue with Edge is not the browser, it is Microsoft. They keep updating things and re enabling "features" I have disabled for privacy or improved usage reasons. I struggle to keep up with change and new features, without having to review everything regularly to put them back how I want them.

more options

Many, many thanks! Long live Thunderbird! Long live Firefox!