My standard practice for mouse based copy & paste is:
- move the mouse to the text I want to copy
- mouse down and drag to select the target text
- release the mouse
- press the key combination ⌘C to copy the text
- paste to destination
I have been using this method for many many years and so have billions of other people. My very first use of a mouse was on an early Apple Mac computer so I have been using a computer mouse since around 1985.
There is though a problem with this method which I usually encounter when selecting text on a webpage. Sometimes this copy & paste method can result in the unintentional activation of a link or too much text or too little text being selected. It can be quite irritating, especially when one is in a hurry.
Several months ago I accidentally discovered a solution to this problem which works every time, or at least it has for me. The solution requires a small change to the copy & paste method. The new method is:
- move the mouse to the text I want to copy
- mouse down and drag to select the target text
- do NOT release the mouse ie keep your finger pressed on the mouse
- press the key combination ⌘C to copy the text
- paste to destination
On occasions, people have said that I am a slow learner. This certainly proves them right as it has taken me some 32 years to discover this copy & paste method 😀
Environment: OSX High Sierra 10.13.2
