10 Mac Copy And Paste Tips And Tricks

Copy and Paste on a Mac is pretty simple. But there are many advanced techniques beyond the basics. You can copy without styles, or only styles, copy and paste files, copy screenshots without saving them, copy more than one thing at a time, and even copy and paste between your Apple devices.

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Video Transcript: Hi, this is Gary with MacMost.com. Here are ten advanced Copy and Paste tricks.
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So you think you know how to Copy and Paste on your Mac and it's fairly simple. But there are many different advanced tips and tricks and I bet you don't know all of these. So let's start off in here in TextEdit. You see I've got two lines here which have different styles. Now you can Copy and Paste, including the style, or Paste not including the style. What's the difference? Well, if I were to copy this text here, Command C, and then go here to the end of this line and paste you could see it retains the format that I copied. But if I were to instead go to Edit and Paste and Match Style, notice it is Option Shift Command V, then it just pastes plain text. So it retains the style of the current paragraph. So think of the regular paste as including style and using Paste and Match Style as just including plain text. No style at all so it inherits the style of the current line or paragraph that you're on. It's the same here in Pages although Pages uses Paragraph Style. So you can copy this and paste it into the same paragraph and it will pick up the style. But if I were to copy this, add a new line and paste this in, it retains that style or I could use Paste and Match Style and you could see it picks up the style that I started with with that blank paragraph. You'll find this in Microsoft Word too. Under Edit and you'll see Paste and Match Formatting.
Now when you Copy and Paste you can only hold one thing in the Copy buffer, also called the Clipboard, at a time. However, there's a hidden second buffer that goes back to macOS Unix-like roots. It's called Kill and Yank and it's done with Control, not Command, Control K and Control Y. So if I wanted to copy something I could do Control K. Now it's going to do a cut, so it's going to pull that out. I could easily just Undo to put it back. Now I can use Control Y to yank it back out of that second buffer. You could see it puts it down there and assuming it is plain text it is picking up whatever style is already set for this line. Now it is important to note that this is separate from the Copy and Paste buffer. So I've now got quick brown in the second buffer here but in the Clipboard I can then do a Command C to copy jumps over. So down here I can do Control Y to yank and then Command V to Paste and you can see how it grabs each thing from its separate buffer. Control K also acts differently if you don't select something. So if you just put your cursor there and you use Control K it grabs everything from the current position to the end of the line.    
Now if you like the idea of remembering multiple items when you copy so you have kind of a history of what you've copied then you should get a Clipboard Manager. I have one called CloudClip that's right here and I can click on it and see the last few things that I copied. I can go back to anyone of those. Here in the App Store if you search for Clipboard Manager you're going to come up with tons of them. Some of them are free. All of them are slightly different in the features they have. So you should look through the ones that are available and find one that best fits your needs. For instance here's CloudClip Manager that I've been using but I like a lot of these others as well too and I've used many of them.
So here's something I've been in the habit of doing for decades. That is to quickly copy something before I submit it. Usually in a web form. So say you've finished filling out a web form, like this one, and you're about to hit Send. Now has this ever happened to you. You hit Send and then you get an Error message. Try to go back but the text you typed is gone. Now you have to remember everything again. So what I usually do is when I finish typing a message like this I do quick Command A  and then Command C. Just two quick keyboard shortcuts there and then I hit Send. If all goes well I just move on. But if something goes wrong I actually have a copy of that in my Clipboard now. I can paste it into the form for a second try. 
Now while we're here in Safari let me show you how copying is not always clearcut. Sure if I'm going to select some text I just hit Command C and I copy. But what if it's something like an element on a webpage like this image. If you Control click or use two fingers on a trackpad or right click on a mouse you get the Context Menu. The Context Menu has several different ways to copy from this image here. For instance I could copy the Link since this image is a link. I also can copy the image address, so the location of the image, or the image itself. So many different situations on your Mac sometimes Control clicking will give you more options for copying than just Command C to copy exactly what's selected. Now I'm often surprised by how many Mac users don't know that you can Copy and Paste files and folders in the Finder. So here I am just looking at some files in my documents folder. I can select one or more of them. I'll select two here and I'll do Command C to Copy. Then I'll go to another location like into this folder here. Now I can use Command V to Paste and it will put copies of those items there. If I hold down the Option key paste changes to Move. So if you're looking for the windows functionality where you could cut and then paste files you could do that on a Mac but you copy instead Option Command V, Move, instead of cutting and pasting.
Now one of my favorite Copy and Paste tips has to do with taking ScreenShots. So if you do Shift Command 5 you'll bring up the Screenshot interface here at the bottom. You can capture the entire screen, selected window, or portion of the screen. Now if I want to copy this to the Clipboard rather than saving it to a file I can by going to Options and selecting Clipboard. But I don't actually have to do this. I don't even have to hit the Capture button. While I'm in the middle of setting this up if I simply do a quick Command C it will copy what's selected. So, for instance, here in Mail in the body of the message I can now do Command V to paste and it pastes in what I copied. It's much easier to do screenshots that way and it doesn't leave around a file that you later have to delete. 
Now sometimes apps allow you to copy more than just the text. You can copy the style. So, for instance, if I were to select this text here I could, of course, use Command C or Edit Copy. But if I go to Format there's also Copy Style that's Option Command C. Once I do that and I have copied a style I now have Paste Style available. So now I could select some other text here and then go to Format, Paste Style or Option Command V and paste the style and retain the text. Here's a pretty advanced example of doing that in Numbers. Notice in this column here the numbers include commas. But in this column they don't. They're using different styles. But if I select just one cell here, go to Format, Copy Style. Then I double click the column there to select all of the numbers in here I can now go to Format, Paste Style and it adds the comma. You can even see it changed the cell formatting here. 
Now you can Copy and Paste between apps in really creative ways. For instance here I am in Numbers. Say I like this chart and I want to show it to somebody. I could do Command C once it's selected and copy it. I can go to a completely different app. Like for instance here I am in Mail and if I do Command V and paste it's going to convert it to an image and paste it in. You could do the same thing, say, with photos. Let me select two photos here in the Photos app. Command C to copy. I'll Hide that. Here I am in an email message. I can do Command V and it pastes both of those photos here into my message. I think this is the easiest way to add images to Mail. Yet a lot of people still mess around with File, Attach Files, and then go and find that file, or using functions in photos to create the message in the first place. Just a quick copy and paste does it. 
Now let's say you loose track of what's in the Clipboard. I'll copy this here but now I can't remember what I copied exactly. There's a way to see in Clipboard. To do that you need to switch to the Finder. Then look under Edit and there's an option for Show Clipboard. This will bring up a little window and show you what's in the clipboard. Even tell you a little bit of information about it like this is Rich Text. This will work with images as well. So I go to Photos here and select an image and copy. Then I go back to the Finder and go to Show Clipboard. It will even show me the image that's in there. 
So I've got one more bonus one for you. You can Copy and Paste between devices. This is called Universal Clipboard. Now to do that you've got to make sure you've got everything setup to use Handoff on your devices. So you can go to this Apple Support page right here and then if you scroll down to Handoff you can see all of the requirements for it. The devices have to be using the same iCloud account. They have to have Bluetooth and WiFi turned on although not necessarily on the same WiFi network. Then there are settings for it. So, for instance on your Mac in System Preferences there's a setting under General for Allow Handoff. Once you've got that set you can copy something on one device and then on the other device you can paste it. There's a time limit for that too. So don't expect to copy something and then much later be able to paste it. It usually has to happen within a minute or two. 
So there's a bunch of different things a lot of Mac users don't know about Copy and Paste. I hope you learned something new. Thanks for watching.

Comments: 16 Responses to “10 Mac Copy And Paste Tips And Tricks”

Stephen Schulte

4 years ago

Gary,

A very nice instructional video! In conjunction with copy and pasting it would be great if you could do an instructional video on "Copy'em" (originally "Copy'em Paste) - which is available on the Apple Mac Store. This app is essential for me and replaces all previous copy/paste managers. Copy'em also offers an iOS app that works with the Mac version. The features in Copy'em should be standard in Mac. It's 2020 & Mac still only has 1 copy/paste!!

Glad Hoi Chang did this app!!

Gary Rosenzweig

Stephen: I mention Clipboard Managers in this video. it is #3.

Gary, Yes a very brief mention but Copy'em (and maybe 1 or 2 others) need to be REALLY shown to MacUsers as they truly open the door to using a Mac efficiently! Another similarly super-useful app would be TextExpander (can't live without it) and not a copy/paste but essential is Default Folder X.

Thanks, Steve

Howard Brazee

The alt-paste option switching to move works in reverse when pasting to a different drive, which I use more often. Just now I noticed "Copy as pathname". What does that do?

Howard: Try it and you'll see. It does exactly what it says.

Jeanne Bragg

I always learn so much from you.
Have spent the past two days dragging screenshots to the tras after haveping used them.
Also learned from your Udemy video how to “copy and match styles” in pages
Now know I can do it everywhere.
Thanks, Gary.

Matthew Brooks

Very clear and concise.
I'm so glad I stumbled across your YouTube page. Even though I'm several years into using Mac OS, I've got 20+ years of Windows usage still encoded into my thinking, which has been slowing me up. Now to embark on the big challenge ... rewiring my brain from Excel to Numbers 😳
Many thanks Gary for this fabulous series

G Lud

I've been using CopyPastePro for 20 years.....I don't know why Apple hasn't bought the company and put it on Macs. It can't be beat. Give it a try and you'll be amazed at all the thing it can do......Not being a techie, I probably don't use all its tools.

Ian Leckie

Hi Gary! I´ve been a Mac user since 1992 (LC II) and had never heard of the secondary clipboard and "Kill and Yank"! Amazing, how incredibly useful! Wish I´d known about this years ago! Thanks so much for this tip! Best regards, Ian.

Jeremy

You demonstrated using command-C to copy a selected region of the screen to clipboard having first activated macOS’ newer screen capture facilities, but a long-standing and easier way to achieve that is using Shift-Control-Command-4 then dragging a marquee of the area you want to copy.

Jeremy: It is just as easy, but it is also easier to know only one keyboard shortcut and then be able to do so much.

Mike

Gary. Recently upgraded to Catalina. Kust tried kill and yank for the first time - it doesn't seem to work. Have they removed it with Catalina?

Mike: This tutorial is done with Catalina. Which app are you trying this with? Try it in TextEdit, for example.

Command+Ctrl+Shift+4 will allow one to select
a portion of the window which saves it to the
the clipboard for immediate pasting with
Command+v anywhere else.

Cmd+v pasting is not limited to the
application from which you took the
screenshot. You can paste the contents
of the clipboard anywhere.

Tami

It would be cool to see how to paste without formatting in google docs. It doesn't seem to work.

Tami: Google Docs has its own command for this under the Edit menu. Are you saying it isn't working for you? That would be a bug in Google Docs then.

Comments Closed.

10 Mac Copy And Paste Tips And Tricks

Comments: 16 Responses to “10 Mac Copy And Paste Tips And Tricks”

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