Google dramatically improves copying and pasting between Gmail and Google Docs, but only in Chrome

Google today announced it has made dramatic improvements to copying and pasting between Gmail and Google Docs, Sheets, and Slides. There’s only one catch: you have to be using Chrome.

If you have Google’s browser, you can now copy slides from one presentation to another, bring shapes from drawings into a slide, or even take tables from a spreadsheet and paste it into a Gmail message. Regardless of what you’re doing, Google claims the formatting will stay exactly the same.

Just like before, copy and paste can be accessed from the keyboard shortcuts you’re used to or from the right-click menu. The copy and paste support document adds a bit more:

Google Docs, Sheets, and Slides let you copy and paste text and images between all of your documents, spreadsheets, and presentations — even if you’re going from one type of file to another. And if you copy an image from a desktop application on your computer, you can paste it right into your document, spreadsheet, or presentation.

What happens if you’re on a different browser? Google offers a web clipboard, but using it is quite a drag.

It takes eight steps to get anything done, according to the same support page:

• Select what you’d like to copy.
• Click the Edit menu and select Web clipboard.
• Click Copy selection to web clipboard.
• In the destination file, click the Edit menu and select Web clipboard again; you’ll see the selection that you previously copied. If you copied multiple things, you’ll see a list of the items you’ve recently copied.
• Place the cursor where you want to paste the content.
• Select Web clipboard from the Edit menu.
• Select what you want to paste. Depending on your selection, you’ll see different formats that you can choose from to paste what you’ve copied (for example, HTML or plain text).
• Select a format.

Naturally, Google doesn’t care as it would rather you be using Chrome anyway. The more users it has, the faster it can continue to hinder Microsoft’s Office business.

See also – Google adds native Microsoft Word and Excel file editing to latest Chrome OS build and Google launches beta Chrome extension for viewing Microsoft Office files in the browser on Windows and OS X

Top Image Credit: Nicholas Kamm / Getty Images