Forum Discussion
Smart Copy missing
- Aug 13, 2021
Smart Copy seems to be on field trial stage, at least for me on beta/dev/canary channels.
In any channels(stable..canary), command-line option "--enable-features=msEdgeAreaSelect" should enable the feature.
Thanks for the reply. I am the admin of this whole setup MS365 business, and as part of the setup we have Defender Level 2 (the additional feature). That one brings Intune on tow, so my first suspicion was that all the "hardening" features somehow created a policy restricting the Experimentation level.
I spent a couple of hours looking all over the place and confirmed that no policy is being set by MS365, furthermore, my laptop is not registered with Azure AD, so it did not come from there.
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Next, in order to confirm johannal 's diagnostic I followed the same article and installed the Policy Template for Edge.
I checked the registry as well as the the flag set by the Policy using the Policy Editor and the flag *is not there*. I wonder if the diagnostic log is reporting the wrong information by some reason.
I made the change using the Policy Editor then and restarted Edge (by making some restarting-requiring change on edge://flags back and forth) and yes, Smart Copy has appeared on the Context Menu. And in fact, I was able to use it for work, it is really helpful.
So, I was in the exact same situation as ncazer: the policy was not set. The flag on the Registry was not present at all.
One incidental annoying thing: Now on Edge's settings page a huge ugly banner shows stating that my Edge configuration is managed by my administrator. I have traced it to the Policy setting. It is unsightly but, well, can't be helped.
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UPDATE: Because I didn't like that banner I decided to rename the Registry flag to something, and now the banner is gone - as well as Smart Copy. But, on Policy Editor it *still shows as enabled* so there is an disconnect between Policy Editor and the Registry (that's totally out of the scope of this thread).
If I rename that registry flag back once again to the correct name, Smart Copy comes back.
So, my advice, check the Registry in addition to the Policy Editor.
Computer\HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Edge
ncazer Got your feedback, thank you! Although your screenshot says 2, our system still shows it set to 1. Did you restart Edge after changing the policy? Does andres suggestion regarding the Registry work for you?
- ncazerOct 11, 2021Copper Contributor
Hi johannal,
After restarting Edge there was no change, however, after restarting my laptop Smart Copy started working. Thank you for your help in this issue, now resolved.
For reference, this is the command line I used (with elevated privileges):
REG ADD "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Edge" /v "ExperimentationAndConfigurationServiceControl" /t REG_DWORD /d 0x00000002
REG ADD "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Edge" /v "ExperimentationAndConfigurationServiceControl" /t REG_DWORD /d 0x00000002