Help Copy/Paste/Select Mode

[wondercoolguy]

I just switched over from a blackberry peral to g1. I love my G1 of course not all phones will be perfect. When some one sends me a text/email/gtalk anything. I can't copy. With my pearl it had a select mode for where I could the track ball to highlight and copy what ever. Did I miss something w/ my G1 is there away to do that or did they forget that? Thanks for any help

 

[g1tube]

This might help

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ofQqhJ_fa2M

 

[dkaufman1]

Again AF users are the best...not just a text answer but a google dude video answer. Awesome.

 

[onthefence]

That doesn't work for me in all situations. for example in an email, i can't just select a portion of the text and copy it.

but it is neat that it recognizes phone numbers and email addresses. but it would be nice if you could add to an existing contact more seemlessly.

 

[emjohker]

with shift button held down, roll the the scroll-ball over the text you want to copy (this will highlight the text) then, press down the scroll-ball and a menu will appear, allowing you to copy text.
then to paste, just press down the scroll-ball and the menu will appear and select paste....almost like the google guy demonstrated, but this allows you to select just a portion of the text, even if it's just one character.

Cheers

 

[wondercoolguy]

Thanks for posting the video but that is the simple way of getting the text. I'm talking about pulling random text out of e-mails that I've sent of have received.

 

[dkaufman1]

I am not 100% sure, but more like 90% sure you can't copy and paste text if you can't edit it. Reading email or viewing webpages are the two common examples. For the email, you could reply and then copy from that reply to paste where needed.

I also use the "share" link in the web browser to copy the URL for sharing or copying text when I am back at my pc.

 

[Seby86]

although i agree this copy/paste feature on the G1 is a great tool, one thing i really missed was being able to select "ANY" text regardless of the source or whether you could edit it or not. This is possible on Windows Mobile based devices like the T-Mobile Wing.

 

[lorenwinter]

Here is the work around I found... when you receive a sms that you want to copy then past (ie a phone number or address that doesn't show up.)
-Long Press on the message that has the text in it you want to copy
-Click Forward
-then you select the part of the new message you want to copy
-with shift button held down, roll the the scroll-ball over the text you want to copy (this will highlight the text) then, press down the scroll-ball and a menu will appear, allowing you to copy text.
-then to paste, just press down the scroll-ball and the menu will appear and select paste

This is what I found to be my work around for the same issue I had.

-Cheers

 

[rickbrunernyc]

It's lame that this doesn't work better. A friend emailed in Gmail me a string of numbers that I wanted to add to my address book, and I couldn't find any way to select them. I did try what "lorenwinter" recommended above, and it didn't work. Maybe it does with an SMS, but in the native Adroid Gmail app, the forwarded text was off limits for me to select. It's a major feature flaw, and this discussion is 6 months old and it doesn't work any better now.

 

[Zinc]

Today someone emailed me with a phone number. I couldn't find how to 'use detail' (Nokia speak) or extract the phone number in any way. So I came onto the forum to search for an answer as I was clearly missing something. Is it right that there really isn't any way do doing it? Seems like a crazy omission...

 

[justjimjpc]

Today someone emailed me with a phone number. I couldn't find how to 'use detail' (Nokia speak) or extract the phone number in any way. So I came onto the forum to search for an answer as I was clearly missing something. Is it right that there really isn't any way do doing it? Seems like a crazy omission...

If i get a number like 800-555-1212 in an email ... and i just long-press it and then release it pops up so the number can be dialed .... if i then long-press that another popup lets me copy All
or press Menu key to "add to contacts"

you can select an existing contact to add the number to .. Or Create a new contact ...

 

[Zinc]

Thanks for the reply Jim. What you describe is how I would expect it to behave but it doesn't do it. Maybe it doesn't recognise the number as a phone number to be used (it's a UK mobile number). Even so, you should be able to select any text/number in any type of message and be able to cut and paste it, no?

 

[justjimjpc]

Thanks for the reply Jim. What you describe is how I would expect it to behave but it doesn't do it. Maybe it doesn't recognise the number as a phone number to be used (it's a UK mobile number). Even so, you should be able to select any text/number in any type of message and be able to cut and paste it, no?

You would hope it would be that way ... but i think the wrote the code to recognize phone numbers and addresses and links specificially for cut and paste or as hot links ... to other apps ....

maybe a future addition will help ... i thought there was a way using the physical keyboard .... and recall doing it when I first got my phone ... but have not done it since last year .... maybe in the guide ...??

 

[waow]

Hi,

I'm new here. But in my HTC Hero I have to press shift & press down the scroll-ball at the same time until the menu pop-up. There I choose select text and I can scroll to the end of selection. At the end of selection I have to do the same action above to pop the menu, then choose copy or cut.

When I want to place the selection I pop the menu again, then choose paste.

Hope this will help Hero users. Thanks.

PS: Ah yes, of course we must turn on the on-screen keyboard to get the shift button.

 

[Gatak]

How would I copy an URL or other bits of text from an MMS that I received on my Android 1.5 phone?

I cannot choose forward or edit or select any portion of the text. I can, however, save attachments.... But in this case I want to be able to copy text and URLs from the message.

 

[vventurelli74]

As "waow" says, he is pretty much right on the money. I am however unsure how this would work on a Android phone without a physical QWERTY keyboard.

I own a G1 and I had this problem the other night when I needed to copy the details of an E-Mail and send them via. SMS. I am running the current non-rooted 1.6 "Donut" build. Holding down on the screen over text did nothing as well as hitting the menu button yielded no options for selecting or copying text.

By holding down the shift key, it will bring up a cursor that will allow you to hover over text and you then click the trackball down once and release and then use the ball to scroll down (While still holding the Shift key) and highlight the content you want selected and then click the trackball again and it will then say "copied to clipboard". It's not intuitive, but it does work for me.

I suppose, for non-keyboard phones, you would have to log in to your Gmail account through the browser and then select the content to copy that way.

I hope this helps!

 

[Stefneej]

As "waow" says, he is pretty much right on the money. I am however unsure how this would work on a Android phone without a physical QWERTY keyboard.

I own a G1 and I had this problem the other night when I needed to copy the details of an E-Mail and send them via. SMS. I am running the current non-rooted 1.6 "Donut" build. Holding down on the screen over text did nothing as well as hitting the menu button yielded no options for selecting or copying text.

By holding down the shift key, it will bring up a cursor that will allow you to hover over text and you then click the trackball down once and release and then use the ball to scroll down (While still holding the Shift key) and highlight the content you want selected and then click the trackball again and it will then say "copied to clipboard". It's not intuitive, but it does work for me.

I suppose, for non-keyboard phones, you would have to log in to your Gmail account through the browser and then select the content to copy that way.

I hope this helps!

Thank you!! I knew there had to be a better way to copy/paste.

 

[davidfootprint]

I've downloaded the dialler program PhoneQ and it allows you to paste the contents of the copy buffer into it, which you can then dial. Hope this helps

 

[xbobg]

I agree that there isn't a way to copy text from an e-mail. I have a Droid 2 and can hold the shift key down to get a curser, and move the curser to highlight text I have just entered, but I can't get it to highlight/copy text that is in an e-mail to me. Disappointing - something I could do easily on my old Windows device.

 

[bertvanbrakel]

On my nexus One, running 2.2 I go to the email I want to copy text from, hit the menu options, select 'more', copy text. Then drag across the text you want to copy

 

[add119]

yes copy and paste on gmail work on android 2.2 os phones

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WGJgyjZUeKs

 

[tttallman]

Years have now passed since the original post. Is there yet a less kludgey way to copy info out of a text message besides first forwarding it? Holding down shift key does nothing on my HTC EVO.

 

[alisonnic]

Years have now passed since the original post. Is there yet a less kludgey way to copy info out of a text message besides first forwarding it? Holding down shift key does nothing on my HTC EVO.

Just got an HTC Evo Shift 4G. It has many features that I love, but cut/copy is just horrible. I'm a very heavy user of text editing on smartphones, so finding a way to address this failing is crucial. I'm just trying to cut or copy some text - three or four words - from one place in a Google Doc or a Catch text file and paste it somewhere else in the same file. So far, this has proven to be impossible. I'm ready to thrown the thing in the trash and go back to my Treo 755p, on which this sort of thing is trivial. (I'm spoiled, I suppose; I've been using Palm OS devices for a decade now.) What gives? How can Google sell an operating system that lacks the capability to select a range of text for cutting or copying? Is it still 1979 in Mountain View? Any suggestions or workarounds would be met with extreme appreciation.