2.3 Moving Text between Applications

To copy text to the clipboard and insert it again, former MS Windows users automatically try the keyboard shortcut Ctrl+C and Ctrl+V, which often works in Linux as well. Copying and inserting texts is even easier in Linux: to copy a text to the clipboard, just select the text with the mouse then move the mouse cursor to the position to which to insert the text. Click the middle button on the mouse to insert the text (on a two-button mouse, press both mouse buttons simultaneously).

With some applications, if a text is already selected in the application where you want to insert the text, this method does not work because the text in the clipboard is overwritten by the other selected text. For such cases, the KDE application Klipper is very useful. Klipper remembers the last entries you have moved to the clipboard. By default, Klipper is started when KDE is loaded and appears as a clipboard icon in the panel. To view the clipboard contents, click the Klipper icon or press Ctrl+Alt+V. The most recent entry is listed on top and is marked as active with a black check mark. If an extensive text was copied to Klipper, only the first line of the text is displayed.

To copy an older text fragment from Klipper to an application, select it by clicking it, move the mouse pointer to the target application, then middle-click. For further information about Klipper, see the Klipper online help.