How to copy text from messages in mac OSX Sierra

Thank you for pointing out the shift drag. It appears that messages supports multiple text modes, and by holding shift and selecting text once, it will stay in that mode. Doing it a second time makes it so you can only select an entire text box, which is annoying for when you are using messages as a way of doing 2-way verification.

This is not documented anywhere in the App, so I'd recommend Apple address this in the preferences of the app. I don't believe this feature should silently enable itself, causing these problems for users like us.

HI,

I don't remember ever trying various modifier keys for this.

8:17 pm Monday; February 13, 2017

Hi,

http://www.apple.com/feedback/messages.html

7:11 pm Tuesday; March 7, 2017

SHIFT-drag worked for me also but not any of the previous suggestions. Ralph, perhaps you had SHIFT-dragged at some point? Because now I can select words like I used to prior to Sierra (without SHIFT-drag). That is the default, even when I restart Messages.

Hi,

It is about practice about where you start the click and drag to highlight.

Try starting at the end and moving right to left as it were towards the first word you want.

10:04 pm Monday; November 28, 2016

Hi,

Annoying as this sort of thing van be I can do this:-

I started at "down" and then dragged right in this case.

I'm mousing over the bubble so that the cursor changes to the line version (you have to be over text and not just empty space in the bubble) then I am clicking and not letting go before then dragging over the next bit of text.

If I click once and allow the mouse to be still the whole Bubble full of text is selected.

8:32 pm Tuesday; November 29, 2016

Hi,

Same version of Messages.

There have been no updates to Messages since the Sierra base version came out.

I have been able to do it this way forever (any version of Messages though El Capitan and Sierra included)

It is just the same for me here.

I mouse over text and the cursor changes to the i Bar.

I then Click, hold and sweep over the text I want.

In Messages if you click without holding then the whole bubble is selected.

This pic was taken using Grab and showing the Cursor and then Screen grabbing part of that.

8:40 pm Thursday; December 1, 2016

I was facing this problem myself and went searching for a solution and found this forum post. I, too, wasn't able to select-for-copy, and the suggestions above (just do it!) didn't work.

On a whim, I decided to try SHIFT-drag and it worked on the first try. Now, I can't get the (annoying) tap-back to come up no matter what I do. Not that I'm likely to ever use it, but I can always CTRL-click or right-click to choose "Tapback..." to use that. It's far better to have to go out of my way to tap-back than it is to go out of my way to select-for-copy.

I hope that ends up being the solution and that it's useful to someone.