19 Ways To Use Copy And Paste On Your Mac Beyond the Basics

Hi, this is Gary with MacMost.com. Here's some Copy & Paste techniques for your Mac that go beyond the basics. 

Of course we all probably use Copy & Paste to copy text and paste it somewhere else. But you can use Copy & Paste throughout macOS. For instance you can use it to copy and paste files in the Finder. So, here I am in my Documents Folder. Let's go into this folder here and I can select, say, this file. I can use Copy, or Command C. Then I can go into another folder, like say this one here, and then use Paste, or Command V, to paste a copy of it. So the original is still there. This is a copy. 

Now instead if you want to move a file you can do that as well. So you could select a file, like for instance I'll select this one here, and Command C to Copy. Then I'll go to the destination, like here again, and instead of Command V to paste, if I hold Option down this changes to Move Item here or Option Command V. I can move the file there. It's no  longer in its original location here because I moved it. 

Now when you're dealing with files, like this one, if you use Command C it copies the file. But you can also copy the pathname. Go to Edit and you go to Copy and hold the Option Key down. Notice it changes to Copy as Pathname. So that just copies the pathname there. Then if you paste that into a text document you'll see the path. 

You can also copy a file from the Finder and paste it into many apps. This is the equivalent of importing it or dragging it into it. So, for instance, I'll select this image here and use Command C to Copy. Then here in Mail I'll use Command V to paste into this message. It will paste the image there. Or in Pages I'll use Command V and it will paste the image there as well. 

Now when dealing with text you can, of course, select some text and then use Command C to Copy text. But you could also Copy noncontiguous sections. So, for instance, I'll select this first paragraph here. Then I'm going to hold the Command Key down and select the third paragraph like that. Then I'm going to hold the Command Key down again and get this one sentence here. Now I can use Command C to Copy. I can switch to another document here and use Command V to Paste. You see I just get those sections I had selected. However you may find it doesn't work in some third party apps if they are not using the standard Mac Text Functions. 

Some apps don't make you create a new document to paste into it. You can just create a new document that has the contents of the Clipboard. For instance, in Pixelmator Pro here I'm going to select a section of this image and use Command C to Copy. Now I'm going to switch to Preview. In Preview I can go to File and there's New From Clipboard, or Command N. This will only be active if you actually have an image in the Clipboard. Using this creates a new Preview document with exactly what I had copied before. Likewise I can go the other way too. I can select part of this image here and Copy it in Preview and then back in Pixelmator Pro there's File, New. But there is also New From Clipboard or Option N. That creates a new document with what was in there. Also, if you just use New you'll see one of the options here is Clipboard. So this is pretty common in graphics apps. But unfortunately you won't find similar functionality in other types of apps, like Word Processors. 

Some apps let you copy just an aspect of what's selected instead of the actual thing selected. So, for instance, I can select this text here and I can go to Format and there's Copy Style or Option Command C. Then I can select some other text, like this, and go to Format, Paste Style or Option Command V. It keeps that text but applies the style that I copied from here to that text. Likewise in Photos I can go into a photo and edit it and make adjustments. Like, for instance, let's brighten this up. Then I can go to Image and Copy Edits, or Shift Command C. It lets me choose exactly what to copy. So I'm going to copy the adjustments there. Then I can go to another image, like say this one, and I can go to Image and then Paste Edit. It will apply that same change here to the properties of the photo. 

Numbers also has a special kind of Copy. If I select this cell here you'll see that it is a formula there. That's the result of the formula. The same for these. If I were to Copy these and Paste them into another table it gives me an error because the formula references are now off. But I can select these and Copy them and then go over here and then instead of pasting, I can Paste Formula Results, or Shift Command V. Then these cells just have the actual values taken from the results over here. 

When you take a screenshot of something, let's use Shift Command 5 to do that, you'll get the floating thumbnail here. You can click that and then you'll see this image. This is an image here so these are pixels. But the Screenshot Tool allows you to select text anyway. It actually interprets the pixels as text and then you could select some text like this, Command C to Copy, and then you can Paste into a Word Processing App, like this, as text. This feature of macOS is called Live Text and it works on any image that you open in Preview, Quick Look, or even the Photos App. So like this photo here. I can select the text in the sign, like that, or click the button here at the bottom right, to select all of the text with this Copy All button. 

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Now when you take a screenshot with Shift Command 5 usually it saves it as a file. But you can go to Options here and set the destination to Clipboard. So this way when you take a screenshot say of the entire Desktop, like that, it actually goes to the Clipboard and now you can Paste it into an email message or a new document. But another way to do that is to use the Screenshot Tool but just leave it as saving to the Desktop or opening in Preview. Then instead of clicking you just use Command C at this point and it will Copy the screenshot to the Clipboard this one time. Or if you use one of these other options like Capture Selected Portion you can select the portion, like this, and instead of clicking Capture or pressing Return just use Command C and it will copy to the Clipboard even though that was not the option set here. 

Of course the other way to do it is to go into System Settings and then go to Keyboard, look for Keyboard Shortcuts and then Screenshots. You'll see that there are two options here, Copy Picture of Screen to the Clipboard  and Copy Picture of Selected Area to the Clipboard. You could use those shortcuts instead of Shift Command 5.

Now you may notice that if you copy Rich Text, that is text with formatting, fonts, colors, and all of that, like this, and then you go to an app that supports all of those styles, if you do a regular paste, like Command V you get all that styling. You may not want that. You may want it to keep the styles that you're using in the document. In most apps there's an option for this in the Edit Menu. For instance in Pages it's Paste & Match Styles, or Option Shift Command V. When I use this it strips all of the styling from the text in the Clipboard and just pastes it in just like you typed it. So using the current font, style, color, etc.

Now you actually have a second Clipboard that you can use in most places where you're editing text on your Mac. The two commands for this are Control K and Control Y.  If you have a blinking text cursor, like right here, and you use Control K it will cut everything from here to the end of the line, like that. But, if you select text, like this, then Control K will cut what's selected. Then to paste it you would use Control and Y to paste it back. This is not the same as the regular Clipboard. So, for instance, I can select this word here and use Command C to Copy it to the Clipboard. Then select this word here and use Control K, then I could go and use Command V to paste that word and Control Y to paste that one. 

So if you double click on a video file in the Finder the default app for that is Quick Time Player. You can now go to any frame that you want and you can use Edit and Copy. What that does is Copy the frame as an image. So now for instance here in Pixelmator Pro I can use File, New From Clipboard and I get what I just copied as an image. Or I can Paste here into Mail and I get it as an image. 

Now if you want to copy some text from a document, like this Pages document here, you don't have to open it up in Pages to copy text. You can do it using Quick Look. So with this file selected I'll bring up Quick Look with the Spacebar. Now I can view the entire document. I can also select text in it and use Command C to copy right from there. Then I can paste it anywhere I want without ever needing to open up that original document. 

Pages, Numbers and Keynote work really well together. In fact you can Copy & Paste complex items between them. For instance, here in Numbers I can select this entire table, copy it, and then switch to Pages and Paste it right here into this Pages document. I can also Paste it here into a Keynote slide. These are now independent instances of this table. They're not linked to the Numbers document. But it does let you work in Numbers to do calculations and then present your results in a Pages or Keynote document afterwards. It works very well with charts. So you could take the chart that your Numbers table produces, copy the chart and then you could paste it into Pages and you can paste it into Keynote as well. 

Now when you Copy something and then you Copy something else and then you Copy something else after that, each time you do that it's replacing the Clipboard with your latest copy. But you can actually access a history of your Clipboard by using Spotlight. Use Command Space and then click this button here, or Command 4, and it goes to your Clipboard History. You can use this button here to replace the current Clipboard with one of these items or just double click this to paste in. If you have a lot of items here you can search your Clipboard History here as well. This not only saves text but images as well. If it isn't working for you go into System Settings, Spotlight, and make sure at the bottom you've got Results From Clipboard turned On. 

Finally I can't talk about Clipboard tricks without bringing up Universal Clipboard. When you Copy something on your Mac you can Paste it on your iPhone or iPad and vice versa. So, for instance here on my Mac I'll select this first paragraph and I use Command C to copy. Then over here on my iPhone I will tap right here to bring up the Context Menu and Paste. It will Paste in the text from my Mac. Likewise, you can select Text here on your iPhone and Copy and then you can Paste it here on your Mac. 

Here's Apple's webpage about it including some troubleshooting tips. 

So as you can see there's a lot more to Copy & Paste on your Mac than just copying and pasting text. Hope you found this useful. Thanks for watching.