Are you wondering how to copy and paste text from the command prompt?
Have you tried ctrl+c followed by ctrl+v and it’s not working?
Are you wondering why when you highlight text and right click it in command prompt it stops highlighting the text?
Well whist it might be irritating for a modern day computer user, it’s really just because of the age of the DOS / Command Prompt interface.
It’s actually very easy to copy and paste text from the command prompt, in fact, there’s more than one way to do it too.
Table of Contents
Open Command Prompt as Administrator
1) Press the Windows Key
2) Type cmd and press return
3) Right Click the Command Prompt icon and select ‘ Run as Administrator’
How to copy text in command prompt
As we mentioned, there are numerous ways to copy text from the command prompt. Lets take a look.
Keyboard method
If you want to copy everything on the screen you can press
ctrl+a to select all text within the command prompt screen, followed by the return (enter) key to copy the highlighted text
You can then paste this into another application using ctrl+v or right clicking your mouse and clicking paste
You can also hold the shift key and use the left and right arrow to select a specific portion of text
Mouse method
My preferred method is using the mouse, this gives you greater control over what you select.
If you click and hold the left mouse button whilst selecting a piece of text, you can select the specific piece you want to copy.
You then need to right click on the top bar (where it says select command prompt), select Edit > Copy
You can then paste this into another application using ctrl+v or right clicking your mouse and clicking paste
