How to Copy and Paste Text on Your Samsung Galaxy

Fatima is 68 years old. Her grandson sends her a message. The message says: "Grandma, I am at 14 Rose Lane. Please come for tea at 4 o'clock." Fatima wants to tell her friend Amina about the visit. She wants to send Amina the address, 14 Rose Lane, exactly as her grandson wrote it. She does not want to guess the house number. She does not want to type it wrong. She starts to type the address with one finger, slowly. She types "14 Rose Lane" but her finger slips. She types "14 Rsoe Lane". She deletes it. She tries again. She types "14 Rose Lnae". She sighs. She wishes she could simply lift the address out of her grandson's message and drop it into her message to Amina, without typing it at all.

If that sounds like you, this guide is for you. Your Samsung Galaxy phone can lift words out of one place and drop them into another place. This is called copy and paste. Copy means: take a copy of the words, without removing them from where they are. Paste means: put that copy where you want it. The original words stay where they were. Nothing is lost. You do not need to type the words again. You do not need to remember them. The phone remembers them for you, for a short time, in a hidden holding place. You just need to learn two small moves with your finger: press and hold, and tap.

Copy and paste helps with many everyday jobs. You can copy a phone number from a message and paste it into the Phone app, so you can call the number without typing each digit. You can copy an address from a message and paste it into a message to a family member. You can copy a name that is hard to spell and paste it where you need it. You can copy a few words from a note and paste them into a search box. Each time, the job is the same: choose the words, copy them, go to the new place, paste them. Once you learn the moves, they work in many apps, in much the same way. The words on the small menu may look a little different in different apps, but the moves stay the same.

Before you start, sit somewhere comfortable, with good light. Put your glasses on if you use glasses. Open a message from someone you know, a message that has a phone number or an address in it. You will practise with that message. Do not practise with a password, a bank code, or a private number. Copy and paste is a tool for everyday words, such as names, addresses, and phone numbers you already share with family. You will read more about what not to copy in the safety section below. For now, pick one safe message, and read one step at a time. Go slowly. If you tap the wrong thing, nothing bad happens. You can tap somewhere else on the screen, and the small menu will go away. You can start again.

A word about fingers: press and hold means put your finger on the screen and keep it there, without lifting, for about one or two seconds, until something happens. It is not a hard press. A light touch is enough. Do not jab the screen. Do not press so hard that your finger slips. Put your finger down, hold still, and wait. The phone will show you a small menu. That menu is the sign that you did it right. If nothing happens, lift your finger and try again, a little slower, right on top of the word you want.

Copy and paste, step by step

Follow these steps in order. Take your time. Look at the words on your screen as you go.

Open the message that has the words you want to copy. It can be a message in the Messages app, in WhatsApp, or in another app where you can see text. Read the message once, so you know which words you want. In our example, Fatima wants the address: 14 Rose Lane.
Find the first word you want to copy. Put one finger on that word. Press and hold. Keep your finger still for about one or two seconds. Do not lift your finger yet. The word should become highlighted. Highlighted means the word gets a coloured background, so you can see it is chosen. Two small handles should appear, one at the start of the chosen words and one at the end. Handles look like small dots or small lines with a dot at the end. A small menu should also appear above or below the words, with words such as Copy, Cut, Share, and Select all. Do not tap anything yet. Just look.
If only one word is highlighted, and you want more words, drag the handles. Put your finger on the end handle, the one on the right, and drag it slowly to the right, until all the words you want are highlighted. In our example, drag the end handle until 14 Rose Lane is all highlighted. If you drag too far, drag the handle back to the left a little. If you drag too little, drag it a little further. Take your time. The highlighted words are the words that will be copied. Check them before you go on. Are they exactly the words you want? If not, adjust the handles until they are.
Now tap the word Copy in the small menu. Tap means a quick, light touch. The menu should disappear. The highlighting should go away. Nothing else will seem to happen, and that is normal. The phone has now taken a copy of the words and put it in its hidden holding place. The original words are still in the message. You have not removed them. You have only made a copy. Do not worry if you cannot see the copy anywhere. It is there, waiting, even though you cannot see it.
Now go to the place where you want the words to go. This is the second half of the job. Open the app where you want to paste. In our example, Fatima opens her message to Amina. She taps in the box where she types a message, so the blinking line, called the cursor, appears in the box. The cursor is a thin line that shows where your typed words will go. If you are pasting a phone number into the Phone app instead, open the Phone app and tap in the number box, so the cursor appears there. The rule is the same: first tap where the words should go.
Press and hold in that empty box. Put your finger in the box and keep it there for about one or two seconds. A small menu should appear, with the word Paste in it. Sometimes the word Paste appears on its own, just above the box. Sometimes you need to tap the cursor first, and then the Paste word appears. Look for the word Paste. Do not tap Cut. Cut is a different job, and you will read about it below.
Tap Paste. The words you copied should appear in the box, exactly as they were in the first message. In our example, 14 Rose Lane appears in Fatima's message to Amina, spelled correctly, with no typing. Read the words in the box. Are they right? Are they complete? If they are right, you can add your own words around them, such as "Hello Amina, I am going to" before the address, and "for tea at 4 o'clock" after it. Then send the message as normal. If the words are wrong, or only part of them appeared, delete them and try again from step 2. Deleting pasted words is safe. It does not delete the original message.

That is all. Press and hold to choose, drag the handles to cover the exact words, tap Copy, go to the new place, press and hold, tap Paste. The first time, it may feel slow. You may need to try the press and hold twice before the menu appears. That is normal. Your finger is learning a new move. After a few tries, the move will feel natural. Many people say copy and paste is the one phone skill that saves them the most typing, once they learn it. It saves mistakes, too. A copied phone number has no typing mistakes in it, because you did not type it. A copied address has no spelling mistakes, because you did not spell it.

If the small menu does not appear when you press and hold, try these three checks before you give up. First, make sure you are pressing on the words themselves, not on the empty space around them. Your finger must be right on top of a word. Second, hold still for a little longer, two slow seconds, without moving your finger. If you slide your finger, the phone may think you are trying to scroll, not to choose words. Third, check that you are in a place where the words can be chosen. In some apps, such as a photo of a page, the words are part of a picture and cannot be chosen. In most message and note apps, the words can be chosen. If one app will not let you choose the words, try the same steps in a different app, such as your Messages app, to practise the move.

Try it slowly: copy a phone number with Fatima

Let us practise with Fatima, with a phone number this time. Her daughter sends her a message: "Mum, call the doctor on 0161 496 0234." Fatima wants to call that number, but she does not want to type all those digits. She is afraid she will mix up two digits and call the wrong number. So she copies the number instead.

Fatima opens the message. She finds the number, 0161 496 0234. She puts her finger on the first digit, 0, and presses and holds. The digit is highlighted. Two handles appear. She drags the right handle slowly to the right, until the whole number is highlighted, from 0 to 4. She checks it. All the digits are highlighted, and no extra words are highlighted. She taps Copy. The menu disappears. The number is now in the phone's hidden holding place.

Fatima opens the Phone app. She taps in the number box at the top, so the cursor appears. She presses and holds in the box. The word Paste appears. She taps Paste. The number appears in the box: 0161 496 0234. She reads it slowly, digit by digit, and checks it against the message. It matches. She taps the green call button. She did not type a single digit. She did not mix up any digits. That is the power of copy and paste. It moves the exact words, exactly as they were written.

Now try the same practice yourself. Find a message from someone you know that has a phone number in it. Copy the number, using the steps above. Open the Phone app. Paste the number into the number box. Read it. Check it, digit by digit, against the message. If it matches, you have done it right. You do not need to make the call. You can delete the number from the box and close the Phone app. The practice is the point, not the call. Do it twice. The first time, read each step as you go. The second time, try without reading. By the second time, your fingers will start to remember the press-and-hold move.

Try a second practice with an address. Find a message with an address in it. Copy just the address, not the whole message. Paste it into a new message to a family member, or into a note. Read it. Is it complete? Did you copy only the address, or did you copy extra words too? If you copied extra words, that is fine for practice. Go back and try again, dragging the handles more carefully, until only the address is highlighted. Careful handle work is the heart of copy and paste. The better you get at choosing the exact words, the better the whole job works.

Copy, Cut, and the hidden holding place

The small menu that appears when you press and hold has a few words in it. Two of them look alike, and mixing them up is the most common mistake in copy and paste. They are Copy and Cut. Copy takes a copy of the words and leaves the original words where they are. Cut takes the words away from where they are, and puts them in the holding place, ready to paste somewhere else. Cut removes the original. Copy does not.

For the jobs in this guide, always tap Copy. You want to keep the original message safe. You only want a copy of the words in the new place. Tap Cut only if you are writing your own words, in your own message or note, and you want to move those words to a different place in the same message or note. For example, if you typed a sentence in the wrong place in your own note, you could cut it and paste it in the right place. But if the words belong to someone else's message, or to a note you want to keep, never tap Cut. If you tap Cut by mistake, do not panic. The words are in the holding place. Paste them back at once, in the same place, before you do anything else. Then the words will be back where they were.

The hidden holding place is sometimes called the clipboard. You cannot see it. You cannot open it like an app. Think of it as a small tray that holds one thing at a time. When you copy something new, it replaces what was on the tray before. So if you copy an address, and then you copy a phone number, the tray now holds the phone number, and the address is gone from the tray. It is still in the original message, safe, but it is no longer on the tray. That is why the order matters: copy, then paste at once, before you copy something else. Do not copy three things and hope to paste them one by one. Copy one thing, paste it, then copy the next thing.

The tray usually forgets what it held when you restart your phone. That is normal. It is not a fault. If you copied something yesterday and restarted your phone since then, you will probably need to copy it again today. The tray is for short-term jobs, not for long-term storage. If you want to keep an address or a number for a long time, do not rely on copy and paste. Save it properly instead. Save a phone number as a contact, as explained in How to Save a Contact and Find It Again on Your Galaxy. Save an address in a note, or in a message to yourself, so you can find it again tomorrow.

Two other words may appear in the small menu: Select all and Share. Select all chooses all the words in the message or box, not just a few. It is useful if you want to copy a whole short message, but be careful: it will copy everything, including words you may not want. Share sends the chosen words to another app, such as a message or an email, in one step. Share is a different job from copy and paste, and you do not need it for this guide. If you see Select all or Share, simply ignore them and tap Copy.

Stay safe: what not to copy and paste

Copy and paste is safe for everyday words. But some things should never be copied and pasted into messages or unknown apps. Do not copy a password, a bank code, a one-time code from a text message, or your bank details, and paste them into a message, an email, or a website you do not fully trust. A copied password can be pasted into the wrong box by mistake, and sent to the wrong person. A code pasted into a fake website can be stolen. If a message asks you to copy a code and paste it somewhere, stop and think. Real banks and real services will not ask you to do that in a chat message. If you are unsure whether a message is real, read How to Spot a Scam Call or Message on Your Galaxy before you tap anything in it.

Also be careful where you paste. Before you tap Paste, look at the box. Is it the right box? Is it a message to the right person? A common mistake is to paste a phone number into a search box, or paste an address into a message to the wrong person, and send it before checking. Always read the pasted words, and check who will receive them, before you tap Send. Reading before sending takes five seconds. Fixing a message sent to the wrong person takes much longer, and sometimes it cannot be fixed at all.

Finally, do not paste words from a message you do not trust into a search box or a website without thinking. A strange link or a strange set of words in a message may be part of a trick. Copying it and pasting it somewhere else can spread the trick, or take you to a fake page. If a message looks strange, if it promises money, if it says you must act at once, or if it comes from a number you do not know, do not copy anything from it. Delete the message, or show it to a family member first. If you already tapped a link in a strange message, read What to Do If You Tapped a Suspicious Link on Your Galaxy at once.

Common mistakes

Tapping Cut instead of Copy. Cut removes the original words. Copy leaves them safe. Always tap Copy when the words come from someone else's message. If you tap Cut by mistake, paste the words back at once, in the same place, before you do anything else.
Copying too much, or too little. If the handles are not placed carefully, you may copy half a number, or a whole message when you only wanted an address. Always check the highlighted words before you tap Copy. Drag the handles slowly until exactly the words you want are highlighted, and nothing else.
Copying one thing, then copying another thing, before pasting the first. The hidden holding place keeps only one thing at a time. The second copy replaces the first. Copy one thing, paste it at once, then copy the next thing. Do not collect copies and hope to paste them later.
Pasting into the wrong box, and sending without checking. Pasted words go wherever the cursor is. If the cursor is in the wrong box, the words go to the wrong place. Always tap in the right box first, read the pasted words, and check who will receive them, before you tap Send.
Pressing and holding in a place where typing is not allowed. Paste only works in a box where you can type. If you press and hold on a picture, on a map, or on a screen with no typing box, the Paste word may not appear. That is not a fault. Go to a typing box first, such as a message box or the Phone app number box, and try there.
Thinking the copy failed because nothing seemed to happen. After you tap Copy, the menu disappears and the highlighting goes away, and nothing else changes on the screen. That is normal. The copy is in the hidden holding place, even though you cannot see it. Go to the new place and tap Paste. The words will appear. If they do not appear, copy again, more slowly, and paste at once.
Copying passwords, codes, or bank details into messages. Never do this. A copied code can be pasted into the wrong box or sent to the wrong person by mistake. Type passwords and codes only where they belong, and only when you are sure the place is real. When in doubt, ask a family member, and do not paste.

Frequently asked questions

Where did my copied text go? I cannot see it anywhere.

It went into a hidden holding place, sometimes called the clipboard. You cannot see it or open it like an app. It holds your copied words quietly, until you paste them. Go to the place where you want the words, tap in the typing box, press and hold, and tap Paste. The words will appear. If you copy something else first, the first copy will be replaced, so paste soon after you copy.

Can I copy a picture the same way I copy words?

Not quite. Pictures work differently. Pressing and holding on a picture usually shows a different menu, with words such as Share, Save, or Download, depending on the app. It does not always offer Copy. To send a picture to someone, use Share, or follow the steps in How to Send a Photo on WhatsApp from Your Galaxy Gallery. To copy words from a picture of a page, such as a photo of a sign, you cannot use copy and paste, because the words in a photo are part of the picture, not real text. You would need to type them yourself, or ask someone to send them to you as text.

Why is Paste greyed out, or why does Paste not appear?

Greyed out means the word looks pale and cannot be tapped. It usually means there is nothing in the holding place to paste, because you have not copied anything yet, or you restarted your phone since you copied. Go back, copy the words again, and paste at once. Paste may also not appear if you are not in a typing box. Tap in a box where you can type, such as a message box, press and hold there, and look for Paste again.

Does copied text stay after I close the app?

Usually, yes, for a short time. If you copy words in one app, close that app, open another app, and paste at once, the words should still be there. But the holding place is short-term. It usually forgets what it held when you restart your phone, and it always forgets when you copy something new. Do not rely on it to keep words overnight. Paste soon after you copy, and save important numbers and addresses properly, as contacts or notes.

Can I copy words from a website or a search result?

Yes, in most cases, the same moves work. Press and hold on the words on the web page, drag the handles to choose the exact words, tap Copy, then paste them into a message or a note. Be careful, though. Only copy words from pages you trust. Do not copy and paste a link from a strange message into your browser without thinking, and do not paste words from an untrusted page into a message to someone else. If a page looks strange, or promises money, or asks you to act at once, do not copy anything from it. Show it to a family member first.

What is the difference between Copy and Share?

Copy puts the chosen words in the hidden holding place, ready for you to paste them wherever you choose, when you choose. Share sends the chosen words, or a picture, straight to another app in one step, such as sending a message or an email. For the jobs in this guide, Copy is better, because you can check the words, choose the exact place, and add your own words around them before you send. Share is faster, but it gives you less control. Use Copy when accuracy matters, such as a phone number or an address.

Why do the handles look different on different apps?

The handles and the small menu can look a little different depending on the app and the keyboard your phone uses. Some phones use the Samsung Keyboard. Others use a keyboard called Gboard. The words in the menu, such as Copy and Paste, stay much the same, but the shape of the handles and the order of the menu words can change. Do not worry about the exact look. Look for the words Copy and Paste, and use the same moves: press and hold, drag the handles, tap Copy, press and hold in the new box, tap Paste. The moves are the same, even when the pictures look a little different.

If the words on your screen look different

Menu words may look a little different on your phone. That is normal. Samsung makes many Galaxy models. Some are A-series phones. Some are S-series phones. They do not all show the exact same words. Your phone company, called a carrier, can also change some words. Your country or region can change words too. And your One UI version matters. In October 2026, some phones use One UI 8, some use One UI 8.5, and some use One UI 9, depending on the model and the region. No one version is "the" version for every phone. The keyboard you use can also change how the small menu looks, as explained in the last question above.

If you do not see the word Copy in the small menu, do not panic. Look slowly at the menu. The word may be shown as a small picture instead, such as two overlapping pages, which means copy. Or the menu may have more words than fit on the screen, so look for a word like More, or three small dots, and tap it to see the rest of the menu. If the menu shows words in a different order, or with slightly different spelling, pick the word that means copy. The same is true for Paste. Look for the word Paste, or a picture of a clipboard, in the menu that appears when you press and hold in a typing box. Take your time. The words are there. You just need to look slowly, and try the press and hold once more, right on top of the word you want.