Ableton Forum

I've been doing this with no problems whatsoever in Ableton since like 2013 but all of a sudden starting today (and I'm on Mac OS Ventura 13.7.2) i can no longer command+D to duplicate (it ust duplicated blank i guess clips you'd call them but in the arrangement view not the session view)nor command+C/command+V to copy and paste the audio nor MIDI clips (also just pastes a blank clip amount for however much I'd highlighted to copy and paste), and I can't for the life of me figure out why if anyone has any ideas?

Started off as i wanted to copy the tail of a the last hit of a rum beat so i could duplicate it as many times as I wanted but then add the last hit with a tail of audio than went beyond the end of that midi grid, but while i can highlight and move that clip REMOVING it from the original take/audio, i cannot KEEP that audio and just copy the last hit which goes into the next bar for use when that part of the beat is over in the track, it's like the audio can only exist once and that's it, no duplicating, no copy and pasting.

I tried freezing and flattening the track too, same thing, as well as just duplicating the midi track that produced this audio from a software plugin (NI battery in case that matters)

Freaking me out as obviously this is a pretty crucial part of track workflow to have just suddenly stop working and I have no idea why it did if anyone else has any idea?

Pasted screenshot of the Ableton instance in question. tried command+D'ing the last 2 beats in the 2nd audio track down to show what that does (pastes just a blank region) if anything stands out to anyone as to why it would be doing this, and like i said this like JUST started, I was ALWAYS able to just zip around the track duplicating or copy/pasting audio or MIDI no problem for the past like 12 years now. Didn't do any upgrades or anything since it last worked so i'm really at a loss.

No? nobody has a clue? That really sucks.

What you are doing is duplicating automation (of which there is none). So, either exit automation mode or end dragging a selection inside the clip header:
select the region you want to duplicate and while dragging, move into the clip header and then release the mouse. You can now duplicate the clip.

So are you saying if you have automation armed you can no longer copy/paste individual bars out of say an 8 bar audio clip? I never used to have any issue with this. I did managed to fix it by going back to an older project that copying/pasting say one bar of an 8 bar loop and having it work as intended worked with and then making that project as generic as possibly and then saving it as the default project template so all future projects open like this after hours and hours of troubleshooting it with ChatGPT while I waited on a reply from the support ticket i'd opened with Ableton and a Reddit thread that got deleted for no apparently legit reason, doing everything we could think of with ChatGPT including deleting every vestige of Ableton from the computer and reinstalling as cleanly as I could and yet it STILL happened, but i did have automation on.

So going forward if i have automation ON it won't let me copy and paste from within an audio clip? But if i turn automation off (hitting A) it SHOULD work the way I'm used to?

aeser wrote: ↑

Tue Feb 18, 2025 6:33 pm

So are you saying if you have automation armed you can no longer copy/paste individual bars out of say an 8 bar audio clip?

No, that's not what I'm saying. I wrote it is possible and explained how to select a portion of a clip in automation mode.

I did managed to fix it by going back to an older project that copying/pasting say one bar of an 8 bar loop and having it work as intended

And this was in automation?
You say you fixed it, but the second part of your comment suggests otherwise.

yes it is fixed now as like i said i opened a previous project where it worked and then made it generic/saved it as the default template, automation was not on by default on it as it used to just be available automatically but now you have to hit A to activate it and as i was just happy to have it work again i wasn't about to mess with it by enabling automation before saving that as the default template so it would work as intended again.

I didn't do anything to duplicate automation, I hit A to enable the ability to use automation, that was it, and as far as your "explanation", "select the region you want to duplicate and while dragging, move into the clip header and then release the mouse. You can now duplicate the clip." yea I tried that, didn't work, along with about 5,000 other things. like i said I've been using it since 2012-2013 and am QUITE used to navigating the track and copying/pasting bits of audio and MIDI and it was a whopping 2 days ago out of nowhere (didn't do any updates, nothing changed, nothing whatsoever, all of a sudden it stops allowing me to grab any audio within an audio clip and copy and paste it anywhere without REMOVING it from the original clip which I don't want to do, i could command-E to slice a bar out of a clip and move THAT, but no longer use as normal and as i always had, and frankly that's no way to restrict yourself in making a track, can't chop audio anymore in an advanced modern DAW? and like i said I did everything ChatGPT could even come up with to fix it for hours and IT was stumped, and went as far as deleting everything to do with Ableton and reinstalling a totally different install file of it even (had the intel only version installed, when i reinstalled i used the universal version as I read it is supposed to work better for my OS version) and yet it STILL did this, like i said until i grabbed an old project that i remembered having done that copy/paste on audio in and bam it was still able to do it, so i saved it as the default and now i'm good to go.