How to use Advanced Copy and Paste on Windows
Since the Windows 10 version, Microsoft has added a new collage feature called Clipboard History, which supports many advanced utilities compared to the usual Ctrl + V operation.
After highlighting text, pictures, and other objects, everyone has a habit of pressing Ctrl + C to copy and Ctrl + V to paste. However, just by changing the paste operation, you can access the Clipboard History feature on Windows 10 and Windows 11 with many advanced options.
That is using the keyboard shortcut Windows + V. At this point, the operating system will display the Clipboard History menu, listing the 25 most recently copied content, including images, text, HTML and many other types of data. You can click to select an item to paste according to the purpose of use.
Although Clipboard History is one of the best features of Windows 10 and Windows 11, Microsoft turns it off by default. To use, you can follow the instructions below.
Turn on Clipboard History
On some computers, you need to enable this feature first. Go to Start > Settings. In the window that pops up, click on the System item then select Clipboard from the menu on the left.
The right part of the screen will display the settings for the Clipboard, drag the On button to turn on Clipboard History.
Copy to clipboard
After enabling Clipboard History, almost anything a user copies on Windows will automatically be put in the clipboard.
Doing this operation is no different from usual, including selecting images, text and other content, then right-clicking and selecting Copy / Cut, or you can use the keyboard shortcut Ctrl + C / Ctrl + X.
Using Clipboard History
To paste something, place the mouse pointer where you want to paste and press the Windows + V keyboard shortcut.
The Clipboard History menu will appear on the screen, and it will list all of the content you've recently copied (except for certain types of data that aren't compatible with this feature). You can tap an item to select paste according to its intended use. This is more useful than Ctrl + V, which pastes only the last copied item.
Pin important items
If you have content that needs to be pasted often and you don't want to lose it when copying other things, you can 'pin' the object, so that it always appears in the Clipboard History menu.
To do this, click the 3-dot button of the item you want to pin, then select Pin. That will ensure the data is saved in Clipboard History, even if you restart your computer.
Conversely, if you want to delete the pinned items, click the button with the 3 dots of the part to be deleted and select Delete or Clear all to delete all.
When it comes to copying large amounts of data, the process is not always quick and smooth. The following article will introduce 6 common and easy-to-implement tips to improve file copy speed on Windows.
1. Use keyboard shortcuts
3 basic keystrokes to cut, copy and paste data on the computer:
Press Ctrl + X to cut the file: This will move the files to the clipboard and possibly paste them to another location.
Press Ctrl + C to copy the file: This operation is similar to the cut operation, except that the file exists a copy in the original directory.
Ctrl + V is the key combination used to paste the file: This is to finish copying or moving the file to a new location.
Alternatively, press Ctrl + Shift + N to quickly create a new folder.
Press Alt + left/right arrow keys to jump to the opened folder before/after the current folder. Use the Alt + up arrow key combination to move to the parent directory of the current directory.
2. Use keyboard shortcuts on the mouse
Highlight any files on the same folder window: Hold down the Ctrl key and click on the files to be selected.
Select a series of consecutive files: Click the first file in the sequence, hold Shift, and click the last file.
However, if you drag and drop the file with the right mouse button, a small menu will appear. This menu allows you to choose whether you want to move or copy the file to a new location.
3. Use Windows 10
Windows 10 operating system brings a more beautiful and intuitive file copy dialog interface. Copy operations are performed faster, and the copy dialog box includes a graph that illustrates the variation in copy speed over time.
When you perform multiple copy operations at the same time, Windows 10 will combine actions into a single window, instead of displaying multiple windows on the screen.
The copy dialog on Windows 10 will not stop the copying process if an error or conflict occurs in the middle, but continue to copy the remaining file and leave the problem file alone.
4. Use TeraCopy software
The Teracopy application provides more advanced data copying, and uses special algorithms to speed up the copying process.
In addition, it can also check the target files to make sure that the copied file is 100% identical to the original, with no loss or error.
TeraCopy also has a number of other customizations to optimize copying and moving data.
The software has a built-in feature that intelligently ignores corrupted files and continues to copy other files first, leaving the corrupted file alone until the end.
5. Using Robocopy software
Robocopy makes copying files much simpler.
Open any Command Prompt or PowerShell command line window. Type the command robocopy and then the parameters depending on the need to copy the data.
If performing a repetitive copying task, it is advisable to create a batch file so that when needed, just double-click the .bat file icon to launch the task.
6. Upgrade the drive
Traditional hard disk drives (HDDs) are slower than SSDs. Performing data copying tasks on HDD will take much more time than SSD hard drive.
In addition, if using the USB 2.0 standard, the copying speed is still limited, so upgrade to the latest USB 3.0 hard drives / external USB drives to increase data transfer speeds.