6/11/19
7:00 am

How To Copy and Paste On a Mac

How to copy and paste on a Mac is one of the most asked Mac questions online. If you are new to Mac you may not know the keyboard shortcuts or how many places you can use copy and paste. In addition to the basics, this video also has 5 expert tips, such as using the Option key to copy and paste by dragging, viewing the contents of the clipboard, and how to use more than one clipboard at a time.

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Video Transcript: Hi, this is Gary with MacMost.com. Let me show you how to Copy and Paste on a Mac.
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So some of you watching may think that Copy and Paste is the most basic thing you can do on a Mac. But it is one of the top questions people ask in Seaches. New users sometimes have trouble with this especially is they're coming from windows. But I'm not just going to show you the basics. I'm also going to show you five advanced tips. Some that even experts may not know.
So here are the basics. First you select some text. So I can click and drag to select this entire line of text. Then you go to Edit, Copy. Now notice there's a keyboard shortcut here to the right. Almost all the time when you copy and paste you're going to use the keyboard shortcut. So note that this is the symbol here for Command. It's not the control key which is where a lot of windows users have problems when switching from windows where the control key is the main modifier key. On the Mac it's the Command key. So this is the symbol for Command. Command C is for Copy.
So I'm going to use Edit, Copy to copy. Then I'm going to click somewhere else on the document. Then I'm going to go to Edit, Paste to paste and you can see that's Command V and it pastes it there. Using keyboard shortcuts I would select then go Command C. Go to a new location and Command V to paste. This works for a lot more than just text. You can also do it for objects. So, for instance, in Keynote you've got some text box objects and a shape object. You can select one. Command C to copy, Command V to paste. You can see I get a duplicate now that I can drag around and put somewhere else. I can do it for the shape as well. Command C to copy and Command V to paste. You can continue to paste using Command V to put more than one copy of either text or an object.
This also works in Images. For instance in Preview here I have the Markup tools turned on. I've selected the selection tools. I can copy an area just by dragging around it. Then Command C to copy and Command V to paste. Now I have a copy of that selection. You can even do this in the Finder with files. For instance I can select a file like this one. Command C to copy. Go to another location in the Finder and Command V to paste. It will make a copy of that file.
Now related to Copy and Paste is Cut and Paste. The difference is it deletes the original. For instance if I were to select some text here and then I were to go to Edit, Cut (Command X for the shortcut), you can see it removes it there. I go to a new location and I can Edit, Paste or Command V, to paste in the portion that was cut.
So maybe you knew that all already. But here are five expert tips that you may not know. So say you have some text that has some color and it has style applied to it and you don't want to take any of that with you when you paste. So you make a selection and you copy, Command C, and go to paste. If I were to paste it in there you can see the styling and coloring follows. But if I were to go to Edit and look underneath Paste you can see Paste and Match Style. That's Option Shift Command V. If I do that you can see I don't get any of that styling with it. It just picks up the styling from wherever it is I pasted. You can find this in a lot of different apps although sometimes it's called something a little different or the keyboard shortcut is a little different. But look for it in Edit menu under Paste.
You can also Copy and Paste without using any of the shortcuts or the Edit menu. You can use the Option key. Select some text and hold the Option key down and drag. It will make a copy and place it where you put it. This also works in a lot of apps when you're dealing with objects. So, for instance, I can Option drag the shape here and it makes a copy of it.
What if you want to see what's in the Clipboard. There is a way. You have to switch to the Finder. So I'm going to click on the desktop here to switch to the Finder. You go to Edit and there's Show Clipboard. It brings up a little window that shows you the contents of the Clipboard. It will even tell you what type of object it is. In this case it's Rich Text. Now normally when you copy something into the Clipboard it's copied there and you can only have one thing in the Clipboard at a time. But there is a secondary Clipboard that works in some cases particularly with text. You can't copy but you can Cut with it. So I can use this secondary command. It's Control, not command but control, and k and it will Cut. Then I can use Control and y to Paste. This will work even if you have something in the regular Clipboard. So I can use Command C to copy quick brown fox. I can use then Control k to cut jumps over. Then use Command V to paste quick brown fox and Control y to paste jumps over.
But what if I want more than that. My last tip is everybody should get a Clipboard Manager. So what is a Clipboard Manager. With the Clipboard Manage I can select quick brown fox, copy it, jumps over, copy that, and lazy dog and copy that. Then I can go to my Clipboard Manager which is right here and I can see all three of those there. If I wanted to grab this one, quick brown fox, I could select it and then I can paste and that's what would appear.
Clipboard Manager allows you to have a clipboard history. You can go back to the last ten, twenty, hundred things that you copied. They could be text. They could be images. If you search in the Mac App Store for clipboard manager you're going to come up with tons of results. There are lots of these. The one I'm using here is called Cloud Clip Manager but there are a ton of others. I've used Flycut, for instance, in the past. I've used a lot of these other ones. You can read through them and see all the different features that they have.
So you guys know how I hate to add extensions or third party apps unless I absolutely need the. Well Clipboard Managers are one exception. I can't live without a clipboard manager. Whether you're writing or coding or working with images clipboard managers are invaluable. I recommend everybody get one. Several are free.

Comments: 17 Responses to “How To Copy and Paste On a Mac”

Ian MacGregor

6 years ago

Excellent information! I didn't know about the Control +K and Control+Y shortcuts until now. I wonder if those are holdovers from Linux/BSD (middle mouse button buffer). Is there a way to create a keyboard shortcut for "Show clipboard" in apps that don't have this item in their Edit menu?

Gary Rosenzweig

6 years ago

Ian: Yes, they are indeed hold-overs. The Show Clipboard command is only in the Finder.

Mr. Luigi

6 years ago

Nice tips! There is an app called PopClip that accomplishes a lot of these functionalities and many more, with no need for memorizing shortcuts! I consider it my most valuable workflow application (with Yoink and CloudClip not far behind!)

John

6 years ago

Where is the "Show Clipboard" command in the Finder? I do not see it anywhere. Thanks!

Gary Rosenzweig

6 years ago

John: I show it right at 4:08. It is in the Edit menu. Make sure you are in Finder, and not another app.

John

6 years ago

Thank you! Found it! Always read MacMost...always filled with very helpful info!! Thanks!

6 years ago

Hello,
My iMac has 4 USER names. How does one "copy" in one USER (example:selection in Numbers application) then use top menu for USERS pull down, log in to another USER, then activate Numbers application (example) get curser to proper location in Numbers, then command-V???? Perhaps use your reco and buy a copy app, or, use dropbox? Or use "public folder??
Thanks.

Gary Rosenzweig

6 years ago

pw: You can't copy and paste across accounts -- to do so would be a major security flaw, if you think about it. So share the file any way you like: Public Folder, Shared account folder, external drive, iCloud file sharing, Dropbox, etc.

John Carter

6 years ago

While in the Finder, if I want to move files from one place to another, I use Cmd-C to copy the selected files, then go to the other folder and use Cmd-Option-V to move the selected files. This is useful after downloading files that would go into my Downloads folder but would rather organize my stuff my moving those files to another folder. But you probably covered this in another tutorial, right?

Nathan Williams

6 years ago

I have a problem coping text from one program to another. The text will mix together and or will not keep its format.
When I paste it in Word. Can you help?

Gary Rosenzweig

6 years ago

Nathan: So copying into Word is the issue, from ... ??? which app? Does it happen with other apps? The other way? What is special about the text you are trying to copy?

John Munro

5 years ago

I am running OS10.14.5 on my 2015 MacBook Pro. Option+Shift+Command+V does not work. I cannot find any way to paste without formatting from a web site to Excel for Mac.

Gary Rosenzweig

5 years ago

John: It simply sounds like Excel doesn't support that shortcut. Did you look in the Edit menu to see what happens when you use those modifiers and what else may be available? You could always paste into a TextEdit (plain text) document and then copy from there and paste into Excel.

John

5 years ago

Gary it was all fine on Excel till Mojave (or maybe Sierra-can't remember) came along then paste without formatting disappeared. As I use this function several times 7 days a week using text edit would be a pain in the proverbial!

Gary Rosenzweig

5 years ago

John: Trying it out in Excel now and I see it working as expected. Microsoft's apps don't use the same menu choices as Apple and other apps do. I see Edit, Paste Special. Using that I can paste without formatting. I think it has always worked that way in Excel. Mac and Windows.

John

5 years ago

Thanks Gary. I assume that you are using Edit>Paste special>Values. It is those 3 steps I am trying to avoid. As I need to do this some 30-40 times a day that is 90 to 120 key clicks each day. 30,000 a year!! Must be a way. As I said it used to work fine with a preset of Paste without formatting.

Gary Rosenzweig

5 years ago

John: Seems to be a missing feature in Excel. It would have nothing to do with macOS, as Excel clearly isn't using system functions. So much have changed with an Excel update. There is a Paste, Match Destination Formatting option in the Home toolbar. But it is missing from keyboard customizations for some reason.

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How To Copy and Paste On a Mac

Comments: 17 Responses to “How To Copy and Paste On a Mac”

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