Can’t copy address bar from Google Chrome

I’ve had periodic problems with Google Chrome on Windows (Version 32.0.1700.102 m, but this has also happened occasionally in the past); sometimes it will refuse to copy the address bar.

Instead of copying, it will clear the clipboard.

Copying from other places, such as a web page (content or using Right-click / Copy Link Address) works fine.

Not sure if it’s an environmental issue — only seems to happen on my work machine; I haven’t seen the same at home.

Very odd.

Blogging it here because I can’t see any mentions of it online (which might be because it’s just me). Will post back if I find the solution.

Update 2014-01-31: I uninstalled and reinstalled Chrome… it seems to work again, for now.

Update 2014-02-05: The problem seems to have come back. Very odd.

Update 2014-02-20: Some old posts on a related problem seemed to suggest it might be a Chrome Extension causing issues, so I removed all of mine. The problem seems to still be intermittently occurring.

Postscript: As per the comments, if you have Remote Desktop running, try shutting it down.

11 thoughts on “Can’t copy address bar from Google Chrome

  1. Chris

    Were you able to pin point the problem? I also have this issue. It doesn’t happen all the time but when it does, it’s quite annoying and I usually have to reboot to fix the problem.

  2. daniel Post author

    I think for me it went away a couple of days later. I’m guessing a Chrome update fixed it. Have you checked you’re on the latest version?

  3. ktopaz

    do you often use RDP (windows remote desktop)
    if so, this bug is probably what is causing your problem:
    https://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=377893

    Close the RDP window and try copy-pasting from the URL bar again, it should work
    drove me crazy, googled it every now and then but had no paitance to go through everything
    finally found this bug report and at least now i can close RDP whenever i need to copy, until chromium / google chrome team fix the bug 🙂
    Hope this sheds some light on your problem (which i also found in this, my latest googling session for the issue)

  4. daniel Post author

    @ktopaz, thanks – great find! It’s true, it was affecting me on my work machine where I use a lot of RDP sessions. Will definitely try closing RDP if it happens again.

  5. klim

    Yep. i always use some (3-10) open rpd connetions.
    But how to fix strange Chrome behavior when i Ctrl+C from url?

  6. Anonymous

    Thank you so much, this was driving me nuts, closed RDP and everything went back to working.

  7. Ben

    I had this very frustrating problem intermittently as well, and closing RDP fixed it right away. Awesome, thanks!

  8. Thierry

    Hello all,

    just to comfirm I had this fustrating problem also ,
    and closing RDP did solve the problem for me.
    aarg ….

    Thanks for the simple :-s solution .

    Greetings,
    Thierry

  9. Ryan

    Ah! Good find with RDP and Chrome conflicting.
    I also found by pressing CTRL-C a bunch of times also managed to copy the string (while RDP was open).

    Cheers,
    Ryan

  10. John

    I have the same problem and don’t use RDP (I use a Mac). I found a work-around. If you select everything after the “https://” in the url, then the copy function will work. It’s super annoying, but at least you can copy and paste web addresses.

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