Preventing the user from copying and pasting from one text field to another.

Question

Hi All. 
 How can we prevent a user from copying data from a text field and pasting it to diffrent field? 
 Thanks.

Eliot Gerson · Accepted Answer

Just for your own edification, it's not necessary to write a custom rule for this. Appian actually has this functionality out of the box! The "masked" option for text fields will determine whether the text is masked on input.

Bibhuti · Answer

Hello, 
 
 You can perform restriction for paste with the help of below implementation. 
 Solution is 
 - Take a text field. 
 -Keep number of chars user can enter. 
 -refresh onkeypress 
 -check the length of the entered data into text field. 
 -if the length is more then the limit then that must be entered using paste. 
 -highlight using validation. 
 
 load( local!maxCharInput: 2, local!value, local!oldValue, { 
 a!textField( label: "E-Mail ", value: local!oldValue, refreshAfter: "KEYPRESS", saveInto: { local!value, if( len( local!value ) - len( local!oldValue ) > local!maxCharInput, {}, a!save( local!oldValue, local!value ) ) }, validations: { if( len( local!value ) - len( local!oldValue ) > local!maxCharInput, "Copy Restricted!!!", {} ) } ) } )

Dan Lluhi · Answer

Unfortunately, you won't be able to prevent a user from using copy and paste functionality. However, you can ensure that two fields do not contain the same value by using a validation (e.g. if(ri!field1 = ri !field2, "Error message", ""). If you're dealing with a grid and you want to ensure that an entire column has unique values, you can use the fn!contains() function to see if the entered value already exists in another row. Hope this helps! 
 
Dan

malcolmp · Answer

Hello Singh002, 
 
While I'm not aware of a way to disable an operating system's built in copy and paste capability, there are other strategies you can employ to keep data from being copied and pasted. Once a field is filled out, you can change the display value to asterisks so that the information can't be copied and pasted. See below code for example. 
 
I hope this helps. 
 
Malcolm

load( 
	local!customer1Address, 
	local!customer2Address, 
	a!formLayout( 
 firstColumnContents: { 
 a!textField( 
 label: "Customer 1 Address", 
 value: if( 
 rule!APN_isEmpty(local!customer1Address), 
 "", 
 joinarray(repeat(len(local!customer1Address), "*"), "") 
 ), 
 saveInto: { 
 local!customer1Address 
 } 
 ), 
 a!textField( 
 label: "Customer 2 Address", 
 value: if( 
 rule!APN_isEmpty(local!customer2Address), 
 "", 
 joinarray(repeat(len(local!customer2Address), "*"), "") 
 ), 
 saveInto: { 
 local!customer2Address 
 } 
 ) 
 } 
	) 
	)

gurdeeps · Answer

Hi, Appian does not provide this feature but masking can be a solution to this.

Preventing the user from copying and pasting from one text field to another.

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