OnDemand “Desktops” applications run in their own desktop environments and this makes it more involved to Copy & Paste from an outside source, such as your local machine, into a running “Desktops” session. It actually requires doing a Copy & Paste & Paste as explained below. Reversing the process requires doing a Copy & Copy & Paste.

The issue is that the OnDemand Desktop has its own Clipboard which is separate from the Clipboard on your local machine. The Clipboard is the temporary storage location where text is copied to when you do a Cut or Copy operation. To copy text from your local machine to an OnDemand Desktop you must open the OnDemand Desktop Clipboard (shown below), then paste your text into it (using Ctrl+v or Cmd+v depending on your OS), and then paste it a second time into your actual OnDemand session, using whatever mechanism the OnDemand app has for pasting (often right-clicking in a window will bring up a Paste option). To copy text out of an OnDemand Desktop session, you reverse this process, copying the text into the OnDemand Desktop Clipboard and then opening that Clipboard (shown below) and copying that text into your local machine’s Clipboard (using Ctrl+c or Cmd+c) and then pasting it into your program on your local machine (using Ctrl+v or Cmd+v).

A demonstration of how to open and use the Clipboard on the OnDemand Desktop where the steps are listed below.

The image above shows how to access the OnDemand Desktop Clipboard. The noVNC toolbar (containing the item highlighted in Blue) will likely start out minimized on the far left side of your window in the middle. Open it by clcking on the arrow icon highlighted in Red. Then click on the Clipboard icon, highlighted in Blue. This brings up the Clipboard, highlighted in Green, which your local machine can interact with, pasting into it and copying from it.

Google Chrome Browser

If you are using the Google Chrome web browser to access an OnDemand Desktop you will be prompted to install a plugin to handle copy & paste.  This is highly recommended, as the plugin allows for copy & paste to function normally between your computer and the OnDemand Desktop without resorting to the method described above.