[MC-1578] Cannot move backwards in Books while writing / Cannot copy anything from the book

when you are writing a book and notice you made an error at the beginning of a page, you have to delete the whole thing in order to undo the error. the same goes for not being able to copy and paste. although I know this was never added, the reason I added this as a bug is because it's strange that you can move your cursor in all the other ingame-interfaces like: anvils, chat, command blocks, seed, name-world, flatworld costumization but not in books

what I expected to happen was: I click with my mous or move with my arrow buttons in front of the word to undo my error.

what actually happened: I had to delete the whole thing in order to undo the mistake.

steps to reproduce:
1. write a page in a book and quill
2. try to go back to the first sentence without deleting everything you wrote.

Linked issues

is duplicated by 7

MC-1643 Ctrl+C/Ctrl+V naming books and § after book title in Arabic Resolved

MC-1899 Writing in Books! Issue! Resolved

MC-3393 Can't edit lines in writeable books Resolved

MC-9359 Not able to go back in Book and Quill. Resolved

MC-13154 old book and quill editing issue (easy fix) Resolved

2 more links

relates to 1

MC-138003 Cannot move backwards in signs while writing / Cannot copy anything from the sign Resolved

Comments 73

Nerdyboy6057 2012-12-11T09:52:14Z

Maybe because books essentially are like signs: they both produce text for use in-game and hence books use the same text input mechanic, but as for the cursor issue I have no idea.

If you mean that books do not have copy paste support, it must be an internal problem because books DO have copy paste support.

Mr_FJ 2013-01-07T14:48:40Z

I don't think it's a bug, more of a technical limitation 😛

Maarten Thijs 2013-01-07T14:53:43Z

what do you mean?

Philipp N. 2013-01-07T14:56:24Z

It would be cool if that was fixed. If this gets added, Mojang could add it for signs too 😃

Eris 2013-01-22T21:06:12Z

There's no technical limitation, because the chat buffer has decent line editing support. I'd love to see books brought up to parity with that.

63 more comments

Lawrence Baughman 2013-01-28T15:37:11Z

I also can not move the cursor left of current position. (can't try right of current position for the obvious reason that I can't move left.)
The up nor down arrow keys work for line editing either.

Although I had no problem copying in text to the written book, during the signing process I could not paste any text to the title of the book.

Erik Broes 2013-02-09T12:33:08Z

More of a feature request, might be added but its a pain in the ass to do all the multiline selection stuff by hand (which also happens to be the reason its not in there atm).

Maarten Thijs 2013-02-09T12:43:18Z

okay we understand. 1.6/1.7/1.8 stuff perhaps?

Patryk Ryszanek 2013-04-24T15:29:51Z

It's an easy fix, it must be. I'm sure it was just overlooked since most people don't bother with notebooks. I use one notebook in almost every world for coordinates of natural formations, villages, temples and all that, I also use notebooks for checklists (which currently is a pain because of this bug/missing feature) and most importantly main goals, like collecting an amount of xp for my planned enchant.

Corgano Wade 2013-04-25T04:13:05Z

This would be extremely useful. You could copy paste book content for guides / books you want to reproduce, and would allow you to publish them in lue of the lack of printing press / copy mechanic. It would also very handy to be able to move the courser

The behavior of published / signed books should NOT be changed, so people can;t copy form them. What we really need is a way to copy books like we can maps

Anyways, I'd support a bit more work going into writable books

Vrej 2013-09-21T14:27:37Z

Confirmed.

Afzal Rahman 2013-10-29T21:12:38Z

@Corgano: You can already copy books. Just put some book and quills with the written book you want to copy.

Corgano Wade 2013-11-25T21:21:37Z

IT must have been the version of mine craft I was on, in 1.7 you can copy them 😃

Writing in books / signs could still use some work though

Mateus Gomes 2014-01-12T14:06:03Z

What I think the "issue" is is the fact that the way how the book is written is still the same as the signs, and you can't, and shouldn't, be able to edit much on a sign, since it has only four lines.
What I think would improve the writing a lot is if you could do things like: "Pressing Ctrl+A will select the whole page." or "Pressing Ctrl and the Left/Right Arrow will select everything the cursor passes though." because this happens with commands, and it's really handy.

+merlan #flirora 2014-06-12T14:27:27Z

It would be better to make book editing on one contiguous page, so inserting or deleting something on one page doesn't take effort on the following pages.

Maarten Thijs 2014-06-29T20:28:03Z

Sorry mods for not having updated this post for the last couple of months myself. But I got really tired of updating a bug that is obviously never going to be fixed. I mean. quote: "upvote bugs you find important, they will receive a higher priority". Yet some bugs have been around for over two years with 600 upvotes. So yeah, that's why, sorry again.

SuburbSomeone (lastname) 2014-08-13T19:33:38Z

Is this a bug? I certainly am not a fan of this, but I don't think it's a bug. However, it should be changed regardless.

galaxy_2alex 2014-10-24T18:29:47Z

Update 1.8: Pasting something in the book works now

pokechu22 2015-06-21T15:57:23Z

Reproduced in 1.8.7 (and known to occur all versions in between, but not personally tested).

Fenhl (Max Dominik Weber) 2015-11-09T21:28:04Z

Affects 15w45a.

Fenhl (Max Dominik Weber) 2015-11-12T14:51:19Z

Affects 15w46a.

Fenhl (Max Dominik Weber) 2015-12-03T04:12:29Z

Affects 15w49a.

Fenhl (Max Dominik Weber) 2015-12-16T06:53:30Z

Affects 15w50a.

Fenhl (Max Dominik Weber) 2015-12-17T20:12:30Z

Affects 15w51b.

Fenhl (Max Dominik Weber) 2016-01-14T04:57:40Z

Affects 16w02a.

Pascal Roeleven 2016-01-26T19:38:03Z

Confirmed for 16w03a.

Fenhl (Max Dominik Weber) 2016-01-29T05:37:30Z

Affects 16w04a.

Fenhl (Max Dominik Weber) 2016-02-09T12:13:13Z

Affects 16w05b.

Fenhl (Max Dominik Weber) 2016-02-10T16:47:37Z

Affects 16w06a.

Fenhl (Max Dominik Weber) 2016-02-15T17:13:37Z

Affects 16w07a.

Fenhl (Max Dominik Weber) 2016-02-16T17:53:44Z

Affects 16w07b.

Immaterialise 2016-02-17T16:30:20Z

Confirmed for 1.9-pre1

Jan Alexander Myhrvold 2016-02-19T20:41:41Z

I support the ability to navigate backwards/moving the write marker freely in books. And I want to quote:
"[Mojang] Grum (Erik Broes) added a comment - 09/Feb/13 1:33 PM:
More of a feature request, might be added but its a pain in the ass to do all the multiline selection stuff by hand (which also happens to be the reason its not in there atm)"

It's 19/Feb/16, and top 6 voted issue. Come on...

Fenhl (Max Dominik Weber) 2016-02-25T18:18:40Z

Affects 1.9-pre3.

Fenhl (Max Dominik Weber) 2016-02-27T11:23:13Z

Affects 1.9-pre4.

MyzelYam 2016-02-29T18:18:49Z

Affects 1.9

James (inactive) 2016-03-15T23:27:07Z

Confirmed for 1.9.1-pre3.

Fenhl (Max Dominik Weber) 2016-04-04T17:47:09Z

Affects 1.9.2.

Mar cus 2016-05-04T09:33:20Z

I don't think it's a bug, but I still think they should change it

null 2016-05-06T00:00:43Z

Confirmed for 1.9.3-pre3.

null 2016-05-11T23:06:36Z

Confirmed for 1.9.4.

null 2016-05-18T22:01:36Z

Confirmed for 16w20a.

null 2016-05-25T23:03:56Z

Confirmed for 16w21a.

null 2016-05-26T22:57:06Z

Confirmed for 16w21b.

null 2016-06-03T01:44:49Z

Confirmed for 1.10-pre1.

null 2016-06-07T22:55:21Z

Confirmed for 1.10-pre2.

null 2016-06-08T21:38:12Z

Confirmed for 1.10.

null 2016-06-22T17:04:25Z

Confirmed for 1.10.1.

Dylan 2016-09-21T18:04:05Z

Confirmed in 16w38a

Dylan 2016-09-28T14:57:25Z

Confirmed in 16w39a

Dylan 2016-09-29T16:09:54Z

Confirmed in 16w39b

Dylan 2016-09-30T20:11:56Z

Confirmed in 16w39c

Dylan 2016-10-06T17:46:11Z

Confirmed in 16w40a

Dylan 2016-10-13T18:17:03Z

Confirmed in 16w41a

Dylan 2016-10-19T18:22:48Z

Confirmed in 16w42a

Dylan 2016-10-27T19:25:14Z

Confirmed in 16w43a

Dylan 2016-11-08T21:57:33Z

Confirmed in 1.11-pre1

Dylan 2016-11-14T22:55:03Z

Confirmed in 1.11

pokechu22 2016-11-23T23:56:37Z

@@unknown:

This bug tracker is for issues with vanilla (unmodified/base) Minecraft. You're using some mods. Contact the developers of the mods you're using (it looks like you want the IC2/Industrial Craft developers based off of that crash report) as only they will be able to fix the issue.

Beyond that, I don't think that crash has anything to deal with this specific issue.

Dylan 2016-12-17T09:14:32Z

Confirmed in 16w50a

CreeperMagnet_ 2018-02-06T02:26:14Z

Still affects 18w05a, please update!

Jon1337 2018-02-15T17:55:28Z

Confirmed in 18w07a

CreeperMagnet_ 2018-03-02T00:08:27Z

Confirmed for 18w09a.

CreeperMagnet_ 2018-05-05T00:29:23Z

Confirmed for 18w16a, and it seems it's going to be fixed! Thanks, mysterious new bug-fixing @unknown!

FaRo1 2018-05-05T09:34:49Z

When an issue is assigned, that doesn't mean it's going to be fixed tomorrow, soon or at all. It just says that if anyone does, it will likely be that person.

Rikard Herlitz 2018-05-07T11:31:51Z

nice, always wanted to be mysterious. yes, i'm working on it 😛

lord.quadrato 2018-06-21T18:36:35Z

Confirmed for 1.13-pre3

muzikbike 2018-07-07T17:40:44Z

Affects 1.13-pre6

Florian CUNY 2018-08-24T08:21:02Z

Affects 1.13.1

muzikbike 2018-10-24T17:01:50Z

Still affecting 18w43a - text in signs cannot be scrolled through.

pokechu22 2018-10-24T17:35:13Z

I think it's probably better to create a separate clone ticket for signs, since signs are relatively trivial in comparison to books but it is separate code.

Rikard Herlitz 2018-10-25T06:45:43Z

Yes, please create a separate ticket for signs.

[Mod] Neko 2018-10-26T01:26:30Z

Ticket for signs is now MC-138003.