Mac Basics: Copy and Paste

Hi, this is Gary with MacMost.com. Today let's take a comprehensive look at one of the most basic techniques for using your Mac or any computer, Copy and Paste.

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So one of the most basic techniques that you need to know when using a computer is Copy and Paste. In its simplest form it works like this. You can select something, like text, and then Copy it by going to the Edit menu and Copy. Notice the keyboard shortcut is Command C. Then you can go somewhere else in that document and then go to Paste, or Command V, to paste a copy of that. So what's actually happening there. Well, when you select some text and then Copy you're actually placing a copy of that item in what's called the Clipboard or sometimes the Buffer. It acts as an invisible storage space where that content sits there and waits for a Paste command. Then it will paste what's in there. But it doesn't clear out the Clipboard. You can go and paste again. I can just keep using Command V as many times as I want. The contents of the Clipboard remain the same even after I've pasted. 

Now you can also use Cut instead of Copy. The difference being when you choose Edit, Cut or Command X it deletes the original content. It still puts a copy of that in the buffer so you can then use Command V to paste. This is useful for when you want to move content, not copy it. Now some people also use Cut as a substitute for Delete. It's a little safer than deleting because when you delete what you've deleted is gone although you can get it back with an Undo. But when you Cut it deletes it but it also places a copy in the buffer. So you could decide to paste it somewhere else or you could decide to simply do nothing with it. 

There's a lot more to Copy and Paste than just that. For instance, I could Copy and then I could go to a separate document like this one and Paste into that document. So you could Copy from one document and Paste into another. You could also go to a completely different app, like for instance I could go to Mail here where I'm composing a new message and I can paste into the message there. So you can copy and paste between apps as long as the content makes sense. For instance copying and pasting text from a TextEdit document to a Mail message makes sense. But maybe copying a video clip into a Text document, that doesn't make sense. 

Now when copying and pasting text notice that not just the text was pasted. Also, the styling was pasted as well. So in this case the font size was bigger. But even if it was a different font, if it was a different style like italics or if it was a different color, that would come along with the Copy and Paste. However, you can Copy and then use Edit, and Paste and Match Style. In this app, TextEdit, its Option Shift Command V. Using this will actually paste but just the plain text and that will take on the styling of wherever it was you were inserting it. Different apps have different commands and different keyboard shortcuts for this kind of command. 

Now Copy and Paste works for more than just text. It works for just about anything. So here I am in an image editing app, in this case Pixelmator Pro. I can choose the selection tool. I can select something and then I could do Copy and then Paste and you could see it pasted another layer with just that selection in it. I can now switch to the Move tool and move this copy around. You can even paste into another document. So I'll go to this blank document here and do Command V to paste and you could see it pastes a copy of the part of the image I selected. Here I am in the Photos app. I could select a photo. Let's say I wanted to paste it into a document. I could just Command C to copy it there in Photos. Then go to a document like this TextEdit document, and then Command V to paste it into that document. The same thing in any other app like Pages, Numbers, Keynote, Microsoft Word. Whatever you want. If I paste here you could see it's going to paste that photo that I copied from the Photos app. You could also paste that image into a message here in Messages. So you don't necessarily have to use this whole interface to select the photo. If you've copied the photo from the Photos app or from anywhere, like a file or part of an image in an Image Editing app, you can go to your message here, do Command V, and it will paste it in. So, for instance, in Pixelmator here I can select a part of the image, do Command C to copy, then switch to Messages and do Command V to paste. You can see it pastes in that part of the image I selected. You could also grab other types of objects as well. So, for instance, here's a photo in Pages. I could Copy that and then I could go into Keynote and Paste and you could see it pastes that photo. In this case the photo even had a title and a caption and you could see it included it when I Copied and Pasted. You could also select multiple items. So here I can select this photo on a Keynote slide. Then I could Command click and select this title here that I could Copy. If I go and create a new slide and then paste you could see it pasted both of those items there. So you can Copy and Paste multiple items if you have them selected.

You could also Copy and Paste Files and Folders in the Finder. So here I am in my Documents folder. I can select a photo like this one. Command C to copy it. Let me go into another folder here and I could Command V to paste it. As a matter of fact if I look under Edit it says Paste Item. Now you could see it puts a copy of that file in this folder. If I go back I could see the file is still there. So it's a true Copy and Paste. You could do that with multiple files. So like I did in Keynote I can select an item and then Command click to select a second item. You could see both of these are selected. I can continue to select items. As long as I hold the Command key down it will add the item to the selection. Then Command C. Then I could go into a folder like this and Command V to paste and those three items come in. 

Now let's say I want to Cut and Paste in the Finder. Well, the Finder doesn't work like that because It's not going to let you remove a file first and then paste it somewhere. Instead it does the opposite. You can only Copy a file. But once you're ready to paste it, if I look in the Edit menu it says Paste Three Items, if I hold the Option key down you could see it changes to Move Three Items. So that's Option Command V. So instead of Command V if I do Option Command V it's going to move those there. If I go back I can see those items are now missing. By the way, most times you Copy and Paste you can easily Undo with Command Z. That even works here now that I've moved those three items. I'll Command Z and you can see it puts them back. 

You can Copy from places even if you're not editing them. For instance, you can't edit a webpage. But I can select text from a webpage and I can Copy. I can't paste because I can't change what's on the webpage. It's not my webpage to edit. But now I can Paste in TextEdit, Pages, Messages, anywhere. 

I did mention that the Clipboard or buffer is kind of this invisible storage space. But you actually can see it. If you happen to be in the Finder you can go to Edit and there's a special menu command called Show Clipboard. You look at that and here you could see the contents of the Clipboard. It will even show an image if that's what you have in there. 

Now if you're thinking it's a shame that there's only one Clipboard. You can only Copy one item and then Paste that item. Wouldn't it be great to actually have multiple Clipboards so you can copy a bunch of things and then select which to paste. Well you can actually get that. An app that does that is called a Clipboard Manager. There are a ton of them available in the App Store. Just search for Clipboard Manager. You'll get some of the most popular ones right up here up front. I've used a lot of these. Currently I'm using CloudClip Manager. But most of the rest of these do basically the same thing and they each have special features. You may like one more than another because of a feature it offers. So take a look at these and maybe get yourself a Clipboard Manager to make Copy and Paste even more powerful.