Paste multiple lines in Google Maps, Firefox

August 7, 2005 / Filed under: Browsers

Jeremy Zawodny mentioned a Firefox tip, regarding pasting multiple lines into the address bar. It seems that if you copy/paste text that is on more than one line, Firefox will only (by default) paste the very first line.

I’ve never had a problem with this in the address bar, but it often comes up with input fields, like Google Maps, for instance.

For example, let’s say there this address posted on a web site, which I’d like to copy into Google Maps:

123 S. Main Street
Rockville, MD 50021

If you try to copy/paste this entire, multi-line address into Google Maps, it will only paste the first line. So... either you have to make two copy/paste requests, or you have to remember the city and state (zip is optional anyway).

This is inexcusable. There should be no reason that pasting an address into Google Maps should be this time-consuming.

Well, thanks to the post by Jeremy, all you have to do is edit your about:config file, in Firefox.

Simple go to the address bar, and type about:config. You will be presented with a giant list of preferences and values. Search for editor.singleLine.pasteNewlines. You can really just type out the first few letters, editor.sin, or something like that, and it will narrow it down, enough so you can easily pick out the preference you want.

Change the value for editor.singleLine.pasteNewlines to 3.

That’s it. Nice.

Comments/Mentions

# Ambarish Malpani at 7/28/2006 4:04 pm cst

Actually, setting it to a value of 2 is better - converts newlines to spaces, which is what you normally want.