How to use Smart Copy to preserve formatting on Microsoft Edge

Microsoft Edge has a “Smart Copy” feature that allows you to copy content from the web and paste it into a document preserving the source formatting. If you ever copy anything content from the web (such as tables or content with a mix of text, links, and images), you know that pasting it into a document never looks as the original content. Smart Copy makes it easier to select, copy, and paste web content while maintaining the same formatting, text, spacing, and links as the original source.

At the time of this writing, the feature is a work in progress, but anyone can test it downloading and installing the latest build (version 89 or higher) from the Canary channel.

In this guide, you will learn the steps to use Smart Copy on the Canary version of Microsoft available on Windows 10.

How to use Smart Copy on Microsoft Edge

To use Smart Copy to copy and paste content preserving formatting, use these steps:

1. Open Microsoft Edge.

2. Open website with the table, images, or content to copy.

3. Right-click the page and select the Smart copy option.

   

   Quick tip: You can also invoke the feature using the Ctrl + Shift + X keyboard shortcut.

4. Use the mouse pointer to select the region of the page with content you want to copy.

5. Click the Copy option.

   

Once you complete the steps, when pasting the content on another application, the style, links, and other elements will be preserved.

According to the company, when pasting you should get an option to paste the clipboard content as an image or as a text with the original formatting, but currently the option seems not to be available. For example, copying something from WikiPedia will paste it as an image, and from a normal website the content pastes as text with original formatting.