Copying Text From CDF Output Cells

[Gregory]

Hello everyone,

In creating CDF assignments for my students, I often include modestly sized tables of data that they must work with. It is natural for students to copy data to a spreadsheet for analysis or to a word processor for drafting a report. The trouble is, the Copy menu item under the Edit menu in CDFs does not copy as plain text, so when a table or grid is pasted into another application, it remains as Mathematica lists, rather than parsed as tab- or comma-delimited text. This means that I must provide a separate data file for most of the tables. Is there any way that I can programmatically add a Copy As Plain Text menu item to the Edit menu?

Regards,

Gregory

[Michael_Morrison]

Hi Gregory,

I have an idea that might be an acceptable workaround. If you go here: http://members.wolfram.com/mmorrison/FacultyProgram.html and open the CopyAsPlaintext.cdf, it has some code that, when evaluated in a particular document, places a DockedCell with a button that copies as plain text when clicked. It's not supremely elegant, but maybe it will work for you. (I tested it by opening the file in CDF Player, highlighting the table of values, clicking the button, and pasting into Microsoft Word, and all cooperated.)

Hope that helps,
Michael

[Gregory]

Hi Michael,

Thanks for this! Works well, and it will make a big difference to the assignments.

Gregory