Helping people with computers... one answer at a time.

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.

Article C2313 - March 25, 2005

Leo Leo A. Notenboom has been playing with computers since he was required to take a programming class in 1976. An 18 year career as a programmer at Microsoft soon followed. After "retiring" in 2001, Leo started Ask Leo! in 2003 as a place for answers to common computer and technical questions. More about Leo.

Not what you needed?

Recent Comments
12 Comments

-----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

Thanks a Billion! I am very experienced, but self-taught; and I was stuck with a "file"/non-file thing on my XP x64 Desktop for a few months. Finally I thought to search the error message (duh!, but guess I was lazy at first and my desktop was messier then anyway).



Well, I am posting this for thanks and two other reasons - for all reading with
this kind of issue:



1 - for me the file ended with a space; and not a period; and thought I would spread the word this still worked!



2 - Also, I read above some had problems with copy and paste. I too had to
re-learn how to do this, but you should be able to do it simply with the Windows prompts (well, at least mine, see version above). I use the portable one from portableapps.com, and also discovered it to be tricky. It seemed to keep "forgetting" or something, what I had copied into the clipboard (which was the entire command written in a text editor to include everything (of course)). I had to carefully left click the very top left of the prompt window to bring up the context menu which included Edit->Paste. Maybe mine was acting up for some other reason, but I think this may help others; keep trying.



So happy that "file" is gone!

Posted by: Michael Trahan at July 25, 2010 2:39 AM

Sorry, I posted this to the wrong site accidentally. I used this info in conjunction with the info here: http://blog.dotsmart.net/2008/06/12/solved-cannot-read-from-the-source-file-or-disk/

Sorry for the possible confusion...

Posted by: Michael Trahan at July 25, 2010 2:46 AM

re. CMD window cut and paste.
Try under CMD window menu "Properties" --> "Options" Tab and and enable "Quick Edit Mode".
This gives you Paste on mouse Right-Button and Copy is by mouse drag and Return.

Posted by: Steve Arundell at September 8, 2010 6:19 AM
Post a comment on "How do I Paste into a Windows XP Command Shell?":





Remember Me?

(You may use HTML tags for style)

Before commenting, please...

  • READ THE ARTICLE. A comment that shows you didn't will be deleted and ignored.

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

  • NO PERSONAL INFORMATION in the comment. No email addresses. No phone numbers. No physical addresses.

  • Anything that looks the least bit like spam will be deleted. Links to unrelated sites or links that appear to be primarily promotional will be deleted, or the comment will be deleted.

  • Don't ask me to recover lost passwords or hacked accounts. I can't. 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 ...