Copy and paste in Windows PowerShell

Question

How do I effectively copy and paste input and output in the Windows PowerShell?

Ƭᴇcʜιᴇ007 · Accepted Answer · 2020-05-26T15:14:01.463

150

To select text in PowerShell with the mouse, just select it as usual.
To copy the selected text to the clipboard you have to either hit Enter, or right-click.
To paste into the PowerShell window, right click.

keyboard

Paste: alt+[space], e, p

Note: In current versions of Windows 10, Ctrl+C, and Ctrl+V work as expected.

edited May 26 '20 at 15:14

answered Mar 28 '12 at 17:09

Ƭᴇcʜιᴇ007

112,807

2

This is what I was missing, thanks!
To actually copy it is necessary to press Enter.
– orschiro Mar 28 '12 at 17:13
1

It is not necessary for me, but I have quickedit turned on in properties. – EBGreen Mar 28 '12 at 17:20
@orschiro: actually you don't need enter. I just tested it. You only need to highlight it and then right-click--> goes into clipboard. For pasting into powershell you only need to right click wherever you want. – Kamran Bigdely Jan 10 '14 at 16:23
right click to paste is not working on Windows 7 with PowerShell, seriously wtf – Alexander Mills Dec 02 '14 at 05:28
1

ok, it works, but it won't paste multiline strings, that's BS – Alexander Mills Dec 02 '14 at 05:30
3

you can also use the menu shortcut, alt + [space] + e + p menu->edit->paste – Val Mar 05 '15 at 10:49
I don't understand how right-click can be copy as well as paste. If I click in the window to select it, right-clicking copies whatever I've selected. If I click in it, then press enter to clear the selection, it copies what I've selected. I guess I have to click the title bar in order to focus on the window without selecting anything for copying. – sirdank May 31 '16 at 16:55
@SirDank It's "copy" when you have something highlighted, and "paste" when you don't. Also, pressing Enter doesn't replace the selected text with "enter" -- PS's window just doesn't work that way, you can't replace selected text by typing. – Ƭᴇcʜιᴇ007 May 31 '16 at 17:00
Doesn't Ctrl+C interrupt and halt an executing command? – mbomb007 Aug 12 '19 at 18:50
@mbomb007 Not if you have some text selected/highlighted when you hit Ctrl+C. – Ƭᴇcʜιᴇ007 Aug 15 '19 at 19:08
It does both for me, at least if I both have something running and something selected. – mbomb007 Aug 15 '19 at 21:27
2

Nb! The menu shortcut will vary depending on the language version of Windows you have. On my Norwegian Windows install I must use alt + [space], d, l – Martin Jan 15 '20 at 21:39
Shift + [Insert] was much easier than alt + [space] + e + p, but now Ctrl + c works just fine. – caiohamamura Nov 15 '22 at 17:51

score 16 · Answer 2 · answered Apr 04 '16 at 07:26

16

(Elaborating on the answer of Ƭᴇcʜιᴇ007 and Val)

Mouse

Select/Mark: Press left mouse button, drag, release.

Copy: Right-click.

Paste: With content in the clipboard, right-click.

Keyboard

Activate Mark: Alt + Space > e > k.

Select a Block: Navigate (arrow keys, Page-down, Page-up, End, Pos1) to the upper left corner of the block, press and hold Shift, navigate to the lower right corner, release Shift.

Copy: With a block selected, either hit Enter or Alt + Space > e > y.

Paste: With content in the clipboard, Alt + Space > e > p.

answered Apr 04 '16 at 07:26

valid

283

2

+1 for the hint to "Activate Mark". I was searching combinations of Cursor and Caret but it always returned results for mouse cursor... – keremispirli Nov 10 '17 at 10:35
The Active Mark operation result in interesting behavior in pwsh 6.1 + PSReadLine 2.1.0. where the Paste operation, just insert the content at the current cursor position and not at the end of the last prompt. – not2qubit Oct 15 '20 at 10:39

score 6 · Answer 3 · edited Apr 22 '20 at 16:15

6

As of PowerShell Core 6, shortcut to copy and paste is Ctrl+Shift+C and Ctrl+Shift+V and is toggleable in the settings:

edited Apr 22 '20 at 16:15

Run5k

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answered Apr 22 '20 at 14:30

Sam Worley

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score 6 · Answer 4 · edited Jun 27 '21 at 06:19

Depends on which PowerShell you are using. With the newer PowerGUI Script Editor or with the PowerShell ISE (integrated scripting environment) cut/paste seems to work better:

To cut drag the mouse across text to select, then ^C or right click to copy.
To paste use ^V

With the older PowerShell:

To cut drag the mouse across text to select, then enter to copy.
You can sometimes hit ^C to copy but it does not seem to ALWAYS work.
You can also drag to select then right click in the top window pane bar and select Edit | copy.
To paste right click.

Good links for people learning PowerShell::

The best PowerShell tutorial I've found so far is here. It goes into quite a bit of description of the command line. Sadly some of the cool stuff in the original PowerShell appears to be broken in ISE, like ctrl-home for example, to delete to start of line.
Some differences between these two PowerShells is here.

Ctrl-V also works in PowerShell on Windows 10 here (PS version 5.1.15063.296). — ComFreek, Jun 02 '17 at 09:44

score 3 · Answer 5 · edited Jul 21 '17 at 08:20

3

As of Windows 10, Ctrl + C works for copying the text & Ctrl + V works for paste. You can also select the data using Shift + Arrow(Left/Right).

The standard console can be used in Windows 10 — the PowerShell ISE is still available but not required for copy/paste support.

edited Jul 21 '17 at 08:20

Bob

61,637

answered Mar 02 '17 at 12:30

AjaiVeer Singh Sandhu

142

score 1 · Answer 6 · answered May 27 '18 at 12:05

1

If you want to put the output of your command into the Clipboard, just use Set-Clipboard cmdlet as the final item in your pipeline, or its standard alias scb.

One caveat is that some commands return text (eg. Get-Content) and others produce collection of objects (eg. Get-ChildItem). If you get weird things in clipboard, insert Out-String before Set-Clipboard to convert everything to text:

gc .\myFile.txt | scb

ls c:\Windows | Out-String | scb

answered May 27 '18 at 12:05

maoizm

1,073

This works well in a PowerShell console. Something that works in both PowerShell and cmd.exe is type .\myfile | clip and dir C:\Windows | clip. – lit Mar 13 '23 at 20:13

score 1 · Answer 7 · answered Mar 28 '12 at 16:47

1

Powershell functions like most terminal emulators (like PuTTY) - selecting text automatically copies it to your clipboard, and right-clicking pastes the content of your keyboard at your cursor.

answered Mar 28 '12 at 16:47

Rilgon Arcsinh

379

Hello Rilgon,
That was my first intuition but it does not work. Nothing gets copied to the clipboard.
– orschiro Mar 28 '12 at 16:55
1

That's strange, because I definitely just tried it myself just to make sure it was right, and it worked just fine. – Rilgon Arcsinh Mar 28 '12 at 16:55
Don't you need to hit enter to copy the contents to the clipboard in Powershell? – Bernard Chen Oct 10 '14 at 16:57
You just select, then right-click on the selection and it's in the clipboard. To paste, just right-click again. – not2qubit Oct 15 '20 at 10:41

score 0 · Answer 8 · edited Mar 20 '17 at 10:17

0

To paste, you may use AutoHotkey script (this also affects all console windows):

#IfWinActive ahk_class ConsoleWindowClass
^V::
SendInput {Raw}%clipboard%
return
#IfWinActive

Found on http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/25590/how-to-enable-ctrlv-for-pasting-in-the-windows-command-prompt/.

edited Mar 20 '17 at 10:17

Community

1

answered Oct 20 '16 at 08:12

Dariusz Woźniak

459

js2010 · Answer 9 · 2017-05-15T16:52:53.533

0

Another way: highlight something, and control-mousedrag to copy it, in the Powershell ISE. Alt-hightlight also highlights rectangles.

edited May 15 '17 at 16:52

answered May 15 '17 at 14:40

js2010

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That doesn't work here. – DavidPostill May 15 '17 at 15:26

score 0 · Answer 10 · answered Sep 10 '19 at 14:05

0

Select text with the mouse or Shift+Arrows Ctrl+Shift+C to copy.

answered Sep 10 '19 at 14:05

Marco Luglio

101

While we always appreciate new contributions, how is your answer really different from this one? – Run5k Sep 10 '19 at 18:59
It doesn't mention Ctrl+Shift+C – Marco Luglio Sep 11 '19 at 19:05

score 0 · Answer 11 · answered Dec 16 '14 at 04:17

This is just to add a partial solution for those times you don't want to use the mouse. It only helps with pasting but you can press Alt+Space then e then p. The Alt+Space opens the PowerShell window's menu, the e opens the Edit sub-menu and the p does the actual pasting. Hardly convenient but it does save you from going to the mouse.

Copy and paste in Windows PowerShell

11 Answers11

Mouse

Keyboard

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