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How to Copy and Paste in Windows

Copying and pasting in Windows operating system computers is one of the most basic operations one can learn to perform, after one learns to use the left and right mouse buttons.

Surprisingly, one of my frequently asked questions happens to be, "How do I copy and paste?"

The Left Mouse Button (Basics)

We must start this discussion by explaining the differences between the left and right mouse buttons, as applied to Windows operating systems.

Unless you, or some other user of the computer has purposely changed the default behavior of the left and right mouse buttons, the left button is used to highlight text, or to select (bring focus to) a Window or text input field, or to activate a program or shortcut, or to activate a hyperlink in a web page or other active content document. In the case of links in a web page the left button is used to "click" on the link to go to the destination page or section, or to "push" a button to submit a form. It is an extension of your finger, which you would use if you operated a touch screen computer. Often you have to perform two left clicks in rapid succession, which is called "double-clicking."

The left mouse button is also used to capture and move Windows by clicking on the titlebar (the top bar containing the title of that window's contents), holding down the left mouse button and dragging the window to where you want it, then releasing the button. The left mouse button is also used to resize windows by placing it on one of the four sides, or on the bottom right corner and pushing or pulling to contract or expand the window in a given direction.

In a nutshell, the left button is used as an extension of your own finger, to select, focus, move (drag), highlight, or activate programs, shortcuts and hyperlinks.

The Right Mouse Button (Basics)

While the left mouse button is used to select, highlight, drag and activate items, the right button is normally used to change the context of the left button, or to open optional information boxes, or to send a document to a destination by means of the mouse, or to copy/cut and paste an item/text from one place to another. That's what this page is all about.

Rather than defining every possible use for the right mouse button, suffice it to say that it provides alternate menu choices via a "flyout menu" (these options fly out vertically to one side of the mouse pointer), that appears when you "right-click" on any item on a Windows computer. The options that become available often change with the content/context of the document or object you right-click on, but there are a few that are always available (unless a webmaster has purposely disabled right-clicking on images).

The constants are "copy" and "paste," although paste may not appear until you copy something first, and will only appear if it is a valid option for the destination document or field.

So what does one have to do to copy for example - text, from one document to a new text document?

Copying Text

To copy text you must first highlight it using your left mouse button. Using this paragraph as an example, place your pointer after the right bracket and > hold down the left mouse button and drag across these words until the end of this word <. Stop dragging before the closing < and release the mouse button, but. DO NOT click anywhere inside the page until I tell you to. The words you dragged across should be highlighted in a medium shade of blue, or some other dark color, with the text changed to white.

With the selected text highlighted move your mouse pointer near it and click the RIGHT mouse button (right-click) and release it to display the alternate context flyout options (they will remain onscreen until you choose one or click away from the options box). One option should be Copy. Move the pointer down to highlight Copy, then left click on Copy. The options menu will disappear and the selected text will be invisibly copied to the Windows Clipboard, where it becomes available to be "pasted" into an acceptable document of text field.

Since my example is going to use a new text document as the destination for pasting I want you to right-click on a blank area of your Windows desktop and choose New, and from the flyout options, choose Text Document. A new file will appear on your Windows desktop with the label highlighted, waiting for you to change it from "New Text Document.txt" to something else. Leave that label for now and double-left-click on it. A blank Notepad document will open. Right-click anywhere inside the body of the blank document and select Paste with the left mouse button and release it. The text you copied from here should have been "pasted" into the blank notepad document. Unless you failed to follow my instructions you should see that line of text in the new text document. From this point you could either save the changes by clicking these keys in sequence: ALT   F   S or you can close the document without saving it, then delete it from your desktop. It only exists to show you the results of a Paste operation.

Your text snippet is still saved in the buffer called the Clipboard, so you can paste it somewhere else to see how it works under different applications.

As I mentioned, some destinations will accept pasted text, or other objects, while others will not let you paste into them at all. Some common pasting destinations include text input fields such as the Run command box (Start Button > "Run" [on right side]), new text or Word documents, new web pages, form fields like comment text areas, and even names of file, folders, or icons.

I hope this helps some computer newbies to become more proficient at this common Windows mouse operation. Copying and Pasting is a very useful operation to understand and put to use.

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