drag and drop not working

[Edgar]

Using latest 3.0.4 and latest Catalina. Magic mouse right click deactivated.

I keep getting a dropdown menu which prevents d and d from working.

I quit Devonthink 3, but the problem persisted.

[martin]

That's very strange Edgar. I can't recall any reports of similar problems on Catalina.

Have you tried a good old fashioned shutdown and reboot of your entire Mac? If that doesn't help, I'm not sure how to advise you. Do you have the same problem in any other apps, like Apple's TextEdit?

[Edgar]

Yes, I have shut down and restarted.
After more fiddling with this drag and drop problem, I have discovered:
it seems to occur only with RTF and text apps, even with the RTF and text notes in DevonThink
If I am extremely fast before the little arrow appears to the right of the selected text (see screen-shot), I can drag the selection. This is not convenient.
The ultra-fast drop-down may have something to do with a little app called CleanText, the name of which appears at the top of the drop-down menu (see screenshot). I have deleted this app, but the problem persists, and CleanText still appears in the drop-down menu, though faded.
The problem lies with that drop-down services menu which seems to be corrupted.
I have recently upgraded DevonThink 3,5 which provides a long list of services at the bottom of that menu, so I'll ask them, too.
Any help or insight would be appreciated.
Sorry, My screenshot was too large to load.

[Edgar]

No help yet from Apple or Devon. I expect you Nisus people will be able to help me fix this problem because it's closely linked to RTF. I hope I don't have to switch to Pages or Mellel because I greatly prefer NWP. Bedtime now here in Europe.

[martin]

The problem is very likely not tied to RTF, but rather the system (macOS) text engine. It's often used by apps to display and edit formatted text, including Nisus Writer. We use a very heavily modified version of the system text engine. However, some features are still mostly handled by Apple, like the services menu and drag-drop.

I certainly doubt DevonThink is to blame, though perhaps they might think of a solution for you.

CleanText could be a factor, depending on how it works exactly. It's possible it advertises services that are shown in all text editing contexts. From what you described it sounds like that services contextual menu is blocking drag-drop. So you may need to take more aggressive steps in uninstalling CleanText or some other text services. If you still see the app on the services menu, you probably didn't uninstall it completely.

[Edgar]

Thank you, Martin. I have tried to eliminate all text manipulation apps except BBEdit and have eyeballed all the dozens of Library folders looking for leftovers. I suppose a clean reinstall would do the job. If you think of anything less drastic, please let me know.

[martin]

You might try disabling extensions in the system prefs:

1. Open your system preferences.
2. Switch to the Extensions area.
3. Select either the "All" or "Actions" categories.
4. Try disabling some of the items you see.

You might need to quit and relaunch your apps for the changes to take effect, I'm not sure.

[Edgar]

Thanks for the suggestion. I'll remember that in case of future need. Meanwhile, I solved the problem by running CleanMyMac.app, which must have cleaned old leftovers. I appreciate the attention you have given this rare problem.