You wrote a brilliant paragraph, but do you realize it’s in the wrong place? Do you need a quote from somewhere else in your essay? No worries – with a few key combinations you can cut, copy and paste on a Mac.
Copy and paste on Mac
Copy to a Mac:
- Left-click your mouse or trackpad to place the cursor in front of the text you want to copy.
- Hold down the left mouse button / touchpad button and drag it to the right until all text you want to copy is highlighted.
- Press Cmd + C – the selected text is now copied.
Another way to copy:
- Left-click your mouse or trackpad to place the cursor in front of the text you want to copy.
- Hold down Shift
- Left-click at the end of the text you want to copy – all that text is now highlighted.
- Press Cmd + C – the selected text is now copied.
You can also place the cursor at the end of the text you want to select, highlight it as described above, but move your mouse / trackpad to the left until you reach the beginning of the section you want to select.
When you copy, the selected text is saved to your Mac’s clipboard. However, it also stays on the screen where you originally found it. To completely remove it from one place in a document and move it to another, use the Cut feature.
Cutting on a Mac
- Follow the same steps above to select the correct text.
- Press Cmd + X and the text is cut off.
When you cut, the text is removed from its original location, but it is saved to your computer’s clipboard.
Paste to a Mac
After copying or cutting text, you almost always want to paste it somewhere else. This can be done in two ways.
To paste the text with all original formatting (bold, italic, font, etc.):
- Left click where you want to place the copied / cut text to place the cursor.
- Press Cmd + V
To paste the text without all the original formatting (paste in plain text):
- Left click where you want to place the copied / cut text to place the cursor.
- Press Cmd + Shift + V
In most cases, only the first method is needed. Often the formatting is automatically removed or you don’t want to change it in the first place. However, if you don’t want to keep the formatting and the software you’re using doesn’t automatically remove it, use the second method.