Is copy/paste images from Google Docs broken?

[Ines C]

Hello everyone,

We used to be able to copy and paste images directly from Google Docs documents, but it seems that this has stopped working in the last few days.

Does anyone have any information about this?

Thank you.

[Mia Tamm _Simpleasyty_ · Accepted solution]

Hey @Ines C

Yes — this is a known limitation, not a bug.

• Google Docs uses its own web-based (virtual) clipboard, meaning that when you copy an image in Docs, it doesn’t actually go into your computer’s system clipboard. Because of this, you can only reliably paste the image into another Google Doc, not into other apps like Word, Illustrator, Slack, etc.

• Users have observed that trying to paste such an image into another app often results in nothing appearing—or a placeholder like “[image]” showing up. 

• This limitation is longstanding; Google Docs doesn’t allow direct interaction with the OS clipboard for security reasons. 

Workarounds you can use:

• Download the image manually, or download the document as a zipped HTML and extract the images.

• Use Google Keep or Google Chat as a middle step—paste the image there, then copy it again into your final destination.

Cheers,

— Mia Tamm

[Ines C]

Hi @Mia Tamm _Simpleasyty_

Thank you so much for the thorough reply. I could swear this was working fine up until a few days ago -- it's really odd.

Anyway, I appreciate your help!

Cheers,

Inês