June 3, 2008

HOWTO: Paste clipboard contents to a CMD.exe window

It was screwing me that when I was working in Windows Command Line interface (cmd.exe) I couldn’t use the CRTL+V or Shift+Insert combination to paste a text from the clipboard. I always had to use the mouse pointer, right click and the paste option from a contextual menu. That was really annoying :-(

Fortunately I found a solution that makes this paste process much more simple:

It’s a bit tricky, and it may take some time while you get that combination into your fingers, but it works :-) So the “magic” keys combination is: “ALT+Space e p”. That is, first press the ALT and the Space key at the same time. A window menu will be shown:

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Then press the “e” key. That will move the selected menu option to the Edit>. And finally press the “p” key to paste a text from the windows clipboard.

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It’s just that simple. Made by Microsoft to be user-friendly :-)

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5 comments:

  1. AnonymousJune 10, 2008 at 6:18 AM

    I've always wondered how to copy + paste in Command Prompt but never figured out how to do it. Thanks for posting this up Jozef! This will really help me whenever I'm performing my labs! :)

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  2. patrickJuly 20, 2009 at 8:14 PM

    I think ctrl-shift-(c/v) works for copy/paste although im not sure ;)

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  3. Jozef JanitorJuly 21, 2009 at 8:17 AM

    @patrick: no it does not work.

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  4. AnonymousFebruary 3, 2010 at 4:50 PM

    On that same menu, click properties and tick "Quick Edit Mode" and "Insert Mode". Then you can paste stuff using your right mouse button.

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  5. Shirley AJune 27, 2024 at 11:26 AM

    Greaat reading your blog

    ReplyDelete