How to Copy, Cut and Paste

Would you like to move a paragraph, repeat a word or sentence without retyping it? Or shift pictures or files around on your computer? Learning how to copy, cut, and paste can save you time and effort. Whether you’re writing an email, organizing a document, or managing folders, it will speed things up.

This guide focuses on how to do it, step-by-step, within a document, using keyboard shortcuts, mouse, and menus. You’ll see examples from Google Docs, but the same methods work in most apps – like email, spreadsheets, word processors. Using the keyboard shortcuts or mouse right-click menus also works in file folders.

Step 1: How to Select Text or Items to copy or cut

Copy, or cut, puts the text or image in a temporary holding place called the clipboard. The text will stay in the clipboard until another item is copied or cut. The clipboard can only hold one item at a time. As long as an item is on the clipboard, it can be pasted into multiple different places in the same or different documents.

Google Docs is shown here as an example. Copy, cut and paste work equally well in most applications, such as email and spreadsheets, as well as in some file directory locations.

How to select text

In the example below, we will select the word Grocery.

To select a piece of text, position the cursor at the beginning of the text, click and hold, and drag the cursor to the end of the text. Let go. The selected text is highlighted as in the example below. To select an item such as a file or an image, single click on it.

3 Ways to Copy, Cut and Paste

We are going to describe three simple ways that you can copy and/or cut text and paste it elsewhere in a document.

Using keyboard shortcuts

To copy, hold down the Command (Mac) or the Ctrl (Windows) key and tap on the letter C. This places the word/item on to your clipboard.

To paste the selected text (that is now on the clipboard) into another position in the document, move the cursor to the new position and click once. Hold down the Command or Ctrl key and tap on the letter V to paste. In the image below, we clicked after the word shop, and pasted Grocery to the end of the first line.

If you make a mistake, you can hold down the Command or Ctrl key and tap on the letter Z to undo.

If you want to cut the text from the first position instead of copying it, and paste it somewhere else, start by selecting the text as shown above.

Hold down the Command / Ctrl key and tap on the letter X. As shown below, the text that was selected will disappear from the document, but it will be held on the clipboard.

Again, to paste the word grocery into another position in the document, move the cursor to the new position and click once. Hold down the Command or Ctrl key and tap on the letter V to paste.

If there are additional places in the document that you want to paste this text, this process can be repeated. Text will remain on the clipboard until some other text or image is copied or cut.

Using the mouse right-click menu

To copy or cut text using the mouse, select the text that you wish to copy/cut and click the right button on your mouse. A floating menu will appear. Here you will select copy (as shown highlighted in the image below ) or cut using your mouse, then left click on the option.

To paste the text elsewhere in your document, move the cursor to the new position and click once. Again, right click on your mouse and this time select paste, as shown in the image below, and left click to paste the text into the new location.

Using the main document menu (for docs, spreadsheets etc.)

To copy or cut text using the main menus at the top of the document, select the text that you wish to copy/cut and click the Edit menu item. A drop-down menu will appear. Here you will select copy (as shown highlighted in the image below) or cut.

To paste the text elsewhere in your document, move the cursor to the new position and click once. Again, click on the Edit menu item and this time select paste from the drop-down menu, to paste the text into the new location.

Summary

Using copy, cut and paste makes editing documents, or moving files, much faster and easier. Whether you use keyboard shortcuts or menus to carry out the task, it will save you time and effort.

Keyboard shortcuts are worth learning, and the most useful to know are copy, cut and paste! They are useful in almost every application and every operating system. To learn more about shortcuts, see our SDM blog post about browser shortcuts.