THE MISSING S

[geronimo]

Forget the Bermuda Triangle, the pyramids, 9-11 and even ’did we really go to the moon?’; I have inadvertently stumbled on the world’s most mysterious mystery! That’s quite a bold statement, I admit; there have indeed been many mysteries that we still haven’t solved, yet my little digital puzzle must surely rank up there alongside, “whatever happened to Lord Lucan?”

 

OK On to the actual issue,

 

I’m a blogger; it’s what I do to pay the bills and believe me, I do punch out some words, an average of 120k a month, on all sorts of things from Art Deco furniture to a description of the Trans-Siberian Railway experience.

 

So, within these blogs are carefully placed links back to the client site, and I, as the writer, simply copy and paste the client url (I am given this at the top of a word doc) into the article as a hyperlink.

 

I highlight the text for the link, click on ‘hyperlink’ and the window pops up for the url. I paste it and, of course, in it goes, nothing unusual there, right?

There have been around one dozen blogs that have the links, yet the url pasted is http, and the client url is https. So, effectively, what is happening is that the letter “s”, which is not at the start or the end of the text (somewhere in the middle) decides to go missing.

 

To simplify this,

 

When I paste a url that is httpsxxxxxxxxxx, it comes as httpxxxxxxxxxxxx.

 

How can this be possible? If the missing letter was the first or the last, then one could concur that one letter of the text was not highlighted, therefore not copied, but this missing letter is within the text body!!!!!

 

It has only happened about 6 times in 100s of blogs, and it has happened with 3 separate writers, not only I.

While I could simply forget all about how the “s” disappeared, and check every job, I am the kind of person who is curious and am still trying to understand this. My rather limited IT knowledge tells me that Code is code, and when copied, it will paste the entire thing into wherever you want it.

 

My conclusions so far:

·       It could be a superior alien race that are amusing themselves by stealing my “s” now and then.

·       It isn’t human error, as 3 different people (all copy and paste) have experienced this.

·       It only happens occasionally.

·       It has nothing to do with the coronavirus.

·       I don’t know how it happens.

 

I am wondering if any of you TV techies can shed some light on this, the program is Mr. Word docs btw. We are using cloud-based storage.

If I can solve this, I will be able to sleep at night, but if no one can figure this out, then I’ll die with a smile on my face, as having discovered the most mysterious of all mysteries!

 

Edited March 13, 2020 by geronimo

[blackcab]

Double check the text in the original document that the client supplied. Did the client supply the wrong link and give an http URL instead of an https URL?

[geronimo]

3 minutes ago, blackcab said:

Double check the text in the original document that the client supplied. Did the client supply the wrong link and give an http URL instead of an https URL?

Checked and double checked Sir! We create the word doc ourselves, and the https is at the top of the page. So, in effect, I am copying and pasting on the same word doc.

Edited March 13, 2020 by geronimo

[cmsally]

It sounds like they are giving you a link to a secure url when maybe they don't have a secure connection or maybe they have the secure connection and haven't got it in a place where it forces pages to load as https

https://help.dreamhost.com/hc/en-us/articles/215747758-Force-your-site-to-load-securely-with-an-htaccess-file

 

It sounds more like it is a problem with how they have set up their website.

[geronimo]

2 minutes ago, cmsally said:

It sounds like they are giving you a link to a secure url when maybe they don't have a secure connection or maybe they have the secure connection and haven't got it in a place where it forces pages to load as https

https://help.dreamhost.com/hc/en-us/articles/215747758-Force-your-site-to-load-securely-with-an-htaccess-file

 

It sound more like it is a problem with how they have set up their website.

Am now looking into that, thx Sally.

[ChristianBlessing]

I agree with cmsally. If the host the URL points to doesn't have a current SSL certificate, it will not be able to reach the site via port 443 (https); it will revert to port 80 (http). Perhaps you can point this out to the URL owner.

[geronimo]

6 minutes ago, ChristianBlessing said:

I agree with cmsally. If the host the URL points to doesn't have a current SSL certificate, it will not be able to reach the site via port 443 (https); it will revert to port 80 (http). Perhaps you can point this out to the URL owner.

Looked into this, client site is https, in fact, I am copying and pasting that into the same document. All data sent to me has the "s", somehow, when I copy the url with the "s" present, it pastes into to hyperlink window as http.

 

Only 6 times out of literally hundreds of documents, I should add.

Edited March 13, 2020 by geronimo

[carlyai]

What about writing it as native text (not in a word proceessor) and copying and pasting into your document?

[OneMoreFarang]

TL;DR

[carlyai]

5 hours ago, OneMoreFarang said:

TL;DR

TS;WM

[RichCor]

It's possible a 3rd running application, like Outlook, is acting as a proxy that's monitoring the clipboard and modifying the contents in transit ...though I'd assume if this is the issue that it would be repeatable and you could test by copy/pasting to Notepad or Wordpad to see if it shows the same effect.

 

see: https://www.deanza.edu/omni-training/03-editing-content/outlook-copy-paste.html

[geronimo]

On 3/14/2020 at 9:22 PM, RichCor said:

It's possible a 3rd running application, like Outlook, is acting as a proxy that's monitoring the clipboard and modifying the contents in transit ...though I'd assume if this is the issue that it would be repeatable and you could test by copy/pasting to Notepad or Wordpad to see if it shows the same effect.

 

see: https://www.deanza.edu/omni-training/03-editing-content/outlook-copy-paste.html

I will try that. Thanks.