“New from Clipboard” Not Working – Snow Leopard

Symptoms:

• You use the Grab utlility or built in screen capture shortcuts in Mac OS X to capture a selection, Window or full screen and then try to use the “New from Clipboard” option in Preview but “New from Clipboard” is greyed out
• You hear the bonk sound when trying to paste a screenshot into many Mac OS X applications after upgrading to Snow Leopard such as Preview, Text Edit or Mail
• If you create a new profile on in Mac OS X, the New from Clipboard feature works as designed and without issue

Explanation:

The Preferences file for screenshots  for the current Mac OS X user profile has become corrupt during the Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard upgrade.

Luckily the solution for this is fairly simple, cause it bugged me for weeks before I put in some effort into finding a solution…and here it is.

New from Clipboard not working after upgrading to Snow Leopard

Solution:

1. Open Finder
2. Browse to:
   • Your Home folder and then to
   • Library/Preferences
3. Locate and Delete the following file:
   • com.apple.screencapture.plist
4. Close Finder
5. Empty your trash
6. Reboot
7. Test your New from Clipboard function!
8. Enjoy yet another great built in Mac feature.

Thanks to Signe Maten for contributing this solution on Apple’s Discussion Forums.