Instructions to fix the error of not being able to copy and paste in a virtual machine in a flash

Are you having difficulty with the error of not being able to copy and paste in a virtual machine? TipsMake has instructions on how to quickly fix errors with not too complicated tips. Let's find out together.

At the present time, there is a lot of work that we need to do on virtual machines. However, the virtual machine system cannot always operate stably, and sometimes we will encounter a few errors that arise while using the virtual machine. Among them, the error of not being able to copy and paste in a virtual machine is the error that users often encounter. Therefore, in today's article, let's join TipsMake to find out the cause as well as the way to overcome this unpleasant situation!

Where does the error of not being able to copy paste in a virtual machine come from?

To be able to effectively fix copy paste errors in VMware, we first need to know the cause of this situation. And in fact, there are usually 3 main reasons why we cannot Copy paste in VMware.

Cause 1: The enable drag and drop and enable copy and paste features are disabled

During use, for some reason the enable drag and drop and enable copy and paste features are disabled. It sounds a bit absurd, but in fact, this is the leading reason why many users cannot copy files from a real computer to a VirtualBox virtual machine . The way to fix this situation is also quite simple, we just need to do the following:

1. Step 1 : When your virtual machine is running, access the options section . Then, click to uncheck the two items: enable drag and drop and enable copy and paste .
2. Step 2 : After disabling the two items enable drag and drop and enable copy and paste , we will shut down the virtual machine guest (you can press the key combination CTRL+E to do this).
3. Step 3 : Turn enable drag and drop and enable copy and paste again.
4. Step 4 : Reopen the virtual machine with the key combination CTRL+B .

Cause 2: The copy/paste feature is disabled

In this case, we may have accidentally turned off the copy/paste feature in the virtual machine. This will of course make it impossible for us to copy/paste on the virtual machine. To fix it, we do the following steps:

1. Step 1 : Open the virtual machine and select devices on the menu bar.
2. Step 2 : Click on Shared Clipboard to expand the options.
3. Step 3 : In the expanded menu, we will see options such as Host to Guest, Guest To Host, Disabled and Bidirectional . If you see the Disabled item selected, it means the copy/paste feature is turned off. Now you just need to click on the Bidirectional item.

Cause 3: VMware Tools has not been installed

Another extremely common reason why we encounter errors of not being able to copy and paste in a virtual machine is because we have not installed VMware Tools. In this case, many virtual machine users encounter it for the first time. The fix is ​​quite simple, we can do the following:

1. Step 1 : Open the virtual machine and click on the VM item in the menu bar.
2. Step 2 : Click on cancel Vmware tools installation. At this time, a window will appear on the screen asking to install the software. We just need to click on the Run Setup. exe section .
3. Step 3 : When the VMware tools setup window appears. Click on install and wait for the installation process to complete.
4. Step 4 : After the installation is complete, click on finish and restart the computer.

So together we have found out the cause of the error of not being able to copy and paste in the virtual machine. Hopefully the information I have provided will help people better understand how to copy files to a VMware virtual machine. Thank you everyone for reading this article.

Marvin Fry

Update 12 December 2023