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Motorola Droid: Cut, Copy and Paste Text
Posted by Mitch on Nov 09, 2009 under Android Tips | 73 CommentsI have never had to cut, copy or paste text on a phone, but it seems that many other people really value this feature on the Motorola Droid. Here’s how it’s done.
1. Tap and hold your finger on the text box you are copying text from for about 2 seconds.
2. A menu appears where you can select Select text.
3. Drag your finger across the text you wish to copy.
4. Hold your finger down on the text area again.
5. Select Copy or Cut.
6. Navigate to where you want to paste the text.
7. Press and hold the text field for 2 seconds.
8. Tap Paste.
For those who were having the same issues I was: When performing a tap-hold it would just bring up a magnifier most of the time and It’s hard to tap accurately on the portion I want to select.
I found a better method:
1) Select text by using the shift/arrow keys on the hardware keyboard as previously mentioned.
2) hold down the “OK” hardware button and the cut/ copy etc… options
i have been playing around with this for a bit, and arirang has the best solution. my problem was that once i had hit “select text” i kept trying to hold down, drag/swipe, and all the other things mentioned. this does NOT work well.
as arirang posted, within text (ive only tried this in an editable file, though to be fair it was in a third party app, which most people have said doesnt work at all) tap to place the cursor where you want to begin selecting. hold down and choose ‘select text’. then tap to place the cursor at the end of where you want to select- this corrects the issue of not being able to scroll/select a large portion of text. hold down here, and choose ‘stop selecting text.’ voila- your desired text should be selected!
regarding all the people whining and moaning- how about you get a hobby? i dont intend to condemn those confused or asking for help, as i came here myself in search of instruction. and because i have a basic degree of reading comprehension, i followed advice and figured this out. sure it doesnt work in every app, but no technological device will ever work perfectly.
those who are going so far as to insult those giving them advice, like that ignoramus PW, or the paranoiac Berlin who thinks those who are loyal to the droid must be planted by the company (good job, loser- developers really have nothing better to do than try to sweettalk you on a third party site) well, you should maybe get a simpler phone, designed for the belligerent and elderly wastrels that you so clearly are. someone who cant follow directions/patiently wait for the inevitable chain of updates required for all complex tech devices, should stick with those special firefly phones for little children.
and PW- if you have this air of unjustified superiority in real life, im sure youll get the crap kicked out of you eventually. way to have an attitude when you’re the completely ignorant one.
-exasperated person OUT
Copy and paste functionality is very limited. Say I have a 3 paragraph email in gmail or corporate sync email or on a webpage. The DroidX doesnt allow a copy and paste of selective text. My crap BB Storm did such a feature. I would never go back to that phone, but it is a feature I miss almost daily. There is an app called “copy and paste it” but still more work than it should be and the phone has to be rooted. I do not understand why they excel in so many areas and neglect this. The select text does not work in emails from others I am reading only in text that I am accessing myself. Even the app takes a digital picture of an image then converts to actual text. It pains me, but kudos go to BB for having first and best C&P functionality. But all other functions are better with droid x.
Thanks this helped a lot. Clipboarfd is what holds the copied text until you paste it, its not something you can acsess
[...] Thanks Hook. That did not do it though. I do appreciate the help! It didn't? No it sure didn't. Motorola Droid: Cut, Copy and Paste Text I couldn't get it to work either. __________________ My name is not BILL (but you can call me [...]
Hello all…where is the clipboard. I’m able tp copy from a text howerve the text is being copied to a clipboard I can not find at all. This phone is great but the simpliest function as clipboard is very confusing. Does it exist? Or where did the text go? Is it a phantom clipboard?
The shift and drag copy and paste feature for a non gmail based account is not an effective or efficient feature for copy and pasting large amounts of info(anything over 1 line) on any email system including gmail, but is worse on yahoo. After making hours worth of research and failed attempts to copy and paste something from my yahoo email to my droids notes I finally gave up and wrote it down on a piece of paper and typed it in. Total waste of time even if I am in a car sitting waiting to arrive at my destination.
This feature could work efficiently if I could decide when to stop the drag feature instead of an auto save. Break this down into parts instead of all one segment. 1 shift, hold and release(maybegive options one of them being copy). 2 drag(fix the scrolling also, impossible to chase it). 3 shift again to copy. 4 paste. Should be an easy fix.
I’m hoping this is fixed soon. The droid is way too amazing of a phone to have such a limited ability to copy paste
Select, copy, paste, and placing the cursor is infintely better on the iPhone. I sure hope this gets fixed. I love the voice to text in multiple apps in the droid incredible.
The above intructions also work similar for coping embedded photos in text messaging. Tap on the photo then hold for a couple of seconds and the menu screen will pop up with options. One of the options is to save to the SD card. When you select that it will save the photo to your Gallery. You can also copy and paste, etc.
Thansk for the help…shift key worked like a charm. No chance I’d ever go back to the storm or any other blackberry…I am a droid convert!
Woops – step #2 above should have said “Press and hold the SHIFT key.”
Here’s what worked for me (in email–which is the main place I need to copy from that I wasn’t able to figure it out).
1. Open the hardware keyboard.
2. Press and hold the key (the second button up o the left edge).
3. Swipe your finger across the text you are interested in to select it.
4. A pop up says it is copied to the clipboard.
Fred, should we wait for 2.2 now?