Nov 5, 2019
How can I include the bullet points when I copy from Google Docs?
Why does this happen and how can I avoid this unexpected behaviour?
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I imagine that's happening because of how the bullet feature in Docs is coded. If you manually insert bullets (using Insert > Special characters), those should copy to other apps.
What I sometimes do (instead of using the built-in bullet feature in Docs) is set up a special character bullet in Preferences. I use the asterisk as my key in the left column of Preferences and the bullet of my choice in the right column. Then, whenever I insert an asterisk followed by pressing the space bar one time, the bullet I want will appear. So that's another option you could try if you do a lot of copying/pasting of bullet points.
~Jo
Original Poster Liran H marked this as an answer
All Replies (7)
Hi, Liran,
When you paste the bulleted items, just use Ctrl (or Cmd) + V (don't use Ctrl/Cmd + Shift + V).
If that doesn't resolve it, it's possible the code for the bullets in the source file isn't compatible with the code in Google Docs, so Docs may not know how to interpret it.
~Jo
Nov 12, 2019
I was talking about copying bullet points from Google Docs to *a different text editor*.
Thanks for clarifying. The same info would be true of the other text editor you're using -- it may not be able to read or use the code from Docs. There isn't any way to avoid this other than to try the pasting suggestions in my last post. Beyond that, the only solution would be to stick with a single text editor rather than working back and forth between two different apps from different software companies and developers.
~Jo
Nov 30, 2019
That's the thing though, it's not thee odd text editor that's not pasting the bullets correctly, it happens in *every* text editor, including Google products like Google Keep. I also tried pasting the bullets in: Windows Notepad, Windows Word Pad, Microsoft Visual Studio Code, all with the same result.
Is it not possible to convert the bullets to plain text when copying text to the clipboard? (I genuinely don't know)
It's a shame, because copying text to a different app is a very common use case. For example I might want to share some text from a Google Doc with a friend in Slack, or I might want to save it to a Google Keep note.
Last edited Nov 30, 2019
Nov 30, 2019
I imagine that's happening because of how the bullet feature in Docs is coded. If you manually insert bullets (using Insert > Special characters), those should copy to other apps.
What I sometimes do (instead of using the built-in bullet feature in Docs) is set up a special character bullet in Preferences. I use the asterisk as my key in the left column of Preferences and the bullet of my choice in the right column. Then, whenever I insert an asterisk followed by pressing the space bar one time, the bullet I want will appear. So that's another option you could try if you do a lot of copying/pasting of bullet points.
~Jo
Original Poster Liran H marked this as an answer
You're very welcome, Liran.
~Jo
Google Product Expert Volunteer (not a Google employee)