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How do I Paste into a Windows XP Command Shell?

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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:

Article C2313 - March 25, 2005

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Recent Comments
9 Comments

Probably the quickest way to get to this menu is to hold down the ALT key, and hit the spacebar. So, for paste, it's ALT+Space, E, P (E for edit menu, P for paste command). If you do it enough, it becomes second nature. :) Especially in a command prompt, the mouse isn't always the quickest method.

Posted by: jefflundberg at March 25, 2005 9:03 PM

I ping for a living & I prefer to set my cmd's Properties to Enable Quick Edit which pastes with a simple right mouse click in the window.

Posted by: Bob at March 25, 2005 10:34 PM

Could you go over that Enable Quick Edit?

I've tried it in a quick edit enabled command prompt, and in a Norton Commander for DOS box, but nothing gets pasted on a right click.

The alt-space-edit-paste routine works as usual.

I must be missing something blindingly obvious!

Posted by: hagsrus at March 29, 2005 8:52 PM

This works fine if you're in a command shell window, but what if you're running the dos program full-screen? Is there then a way to copy and paste between the dos program and XP aps? Maybe like winoldap's int 2F under win 9x?

Posted by: Robert Leeper at December 18, 2005 7:12 PM

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


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iD8DBQFIWW6JCMEe9B/8oqERAhY0AJ4sMgN3KRwC7wRmOtDFiJ8W8KDVcACeIrg0
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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

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