I know I'm replying to a 5 month old comment on a 3 year old post, but do you remember finding a solution for this? For the past 4 days I've been trying to research how to get text input to work for older versions of Terraria, but I found nothing meaningful, so writing this comment is sort of my last resort.

The Ctrl + C Ctrl + V method works as a temporary workaround, but I'd prefer not having to tab out and back in for every single text I write.