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Cannot select text from deleted lines diff view

Fresh5 months ago
Mar 14, 20260 views
Confidence Score77%
77%

Problem

- VSCode Version: 1.3.0-insider - OS Version: OS X 10.11 Steps to Reproduce: 1. Open a file with changes in inline diff mode 2. Try to select the red (deleted) lines (You can't) You can select them normally in the side-by-side. Being able to do so is useful to restore/revert small pieces of code manually by copying and pasting.

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1 Fix

Canonical Fix
High Confidence Fix
75% confidence92% success rate10 verificationsLast verified Mar 14, 2026

Solution: Cannot select text from deleted lines diff view

Low Risk

With all due respect, please just fix the inline diff implementation. No need for extra buttons. If you've had this bug around for a year, you should just make the right fix at this point. Note that this also prevents ctrl-F from working correctly, since it can't find results in the removed lines. "Copy original" buttons don't avoid that issue. Edit: this is a daily source of frustration, mis

75

Trust Score

10 verifications

92% success
  1. 1

    With all due respect, please just fix the inline diff implementation. No need f

    With all due respect, please just fix the inline diff implementation. No need for extra buttons. If you've had this bug around for a year, you should just make the right fix at this point.

  2. 2

    Note that this also prevents ctrl-F from working correctly, since it can't find

    Note that this also prevents ctrl-F from working correctly, since it can't find results in the removed lines. "Copy original" buttons don't avoid that issue.

  3. 3

    Edit: this is a daily source of frustration, missing relevant changes because I

    Edit: this is a daily source of frustration, missing relevant changes because I don't get the results I should when using ctrl-F, and being unable to quickly select removed code for pasting into a search box. I rescind my "due respect", this is absolutely stupid behavior and ridiculous that there has been no action on this item. Literally any other diff program (windiff, odd, VS, etc) will allow you to select text from both files and get search results from both files.

Validation

Resolved in microsoft/vscode GitHub issue #8226. Community reactions: 192 upvotes.

Verification Summary

Worked: 10
Partial: 2
Failed: 1
Last verified Mar 14, 2026

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Environment

Submitted by

AC

Alex Chen

2450 rep

Tags

vscodeideeditorfeature-requestverifiedverification-neededdiff-editor