Ask Leo! by Leo A. Notenboom

How do I Paste into a Windows XP Command Shell?

Search First! Then browse: Categories | Full Archive | By Date | Newsletter

Home » Windows

Using a DOS window under Windows ME there's a handy "paste" clipboard appearing with some other icons in the DOS window title bar. Is there any way to get this in Windows XP? I haven't been able to find any mention of it but may be overlooking something obvious.

You came to the right place. I live in the Windows XP command shell. My (DOS) roots must be showing.

Anyway, the icons may be gone, but the functionality is most certainly still there.

I don't believe that there's a way to actually get the icon back, though it wouldn't surprise me if there were a third party add-on that could add something like it.

But Copy, Paste and a few other old friends are all still there on the system menu. Click on the upper left icon on the command shell window, referred to as the system menu, and along with Move, Size, and so on, you'll see a sub menu called Edit. Click on that, and you'll find Copy, Paste and other clipboard related commands. Here's a screen shot of what I mean:

CMD Shell System Menu

If you're so inclined, there are good things buried in the Properties item as well that will let you control the look, feel and some of the behavior of the Command Shell.

Related:

Helpful? Get new articles weekly by email in my FREE newsletter!

Your Name:
Your Email:


Why Subscribe?

Article C2313 - March 25, 2005

Was this article helpful? «Yes» «No»

Recent Comments
9 Comments

I believe if you type ALT+Space you'll get the system menu, which will allow you to select the entire screen and copy it. (It may take you out of the full screen window.)

Posted by: Leo at December 18, 2005 7:23 PM

Just in case it's useful to anyone: I've found a neat program called Tamedos which among other things gives you the option to use ctrl-c and ctrl-v to cut and paste in a Dos window under XP, as well as smoothing out various other aspects. 30 days evaluation. Registration is $20 -- worth it to me. http://tamedos.com

Posted by: hagsrus at February 5, 2006 2:16 PM

Many thanks. I had to paste a 4-line long command into the shell!
Is there a way to use the keyboard instead?

Posted by: Nadir Mrabet at June 17, 2008 8:15 AM

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

Just use the keyboard shortcuts for the system menu:

ALT+Space
E
P

Does the paste.


Leo


-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.4.7 (MingW32)

iD8DBQFIWW6JCMEe9B/8oqERAhY0AJ4sMgN3KRwC7wRmOtDFiJ8W8KDVcACeIrg0
5chXyU/T/muciRuNWTRSTfc=
=Sdl1
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

Posted by: Leo at June 18, 2008 1:22 PM

how can i enable my cut,copy and paste command?

Posted by: ketab bhardwaj at September 12, 2008 7:00 AM

Post a comment on "How do I Paste into a Windows XP Command Shell?":






(Email Address will not be published.)

Remember Me?

By popular demand...
my tip jar
Cuppa Joe
Buy Leo a Latte!

(you may use HTML tags for style)

RSS feed Subscribe to the RSS Feed specifically for comments on this article.

Before commenting, please...

  • Read the article at the top of this page. If your comment shows you didn't, it'll be deleted and ignored.

  • Comment only on this article. Use the Google search box at the top of the page if you have a question about something else.

  • Don't include personal information in the comment. No email addresses. No phone numbers. No physical addresses.

  • Don't spam. Excessive links to unrelated sites within a comment or across multiple comments will cause all such comments to be removed.

  • Don't ask me to recover lost passwords or hacked accounts. I can't, and those comments will be deleted.

  • I can't respond to every comment. And I can't vouch for the accuracy of others who do.

Please wait. Your comment is being processed ...




Question? Ask Leo!