139

I am running VirtualBox 4.1.4 on my Windows 7 laptop, running an Ubuntu 11.10 guest.

I would like to copy text from Ubuntu's terminal and paste it into a file on the Windows host. This doesn't work for some reason.

Any ideas?

lofidevops
  • 21,912
Misha Moroshko
  • 1,649

9 Answers9

124

Go to VirtualMachine's Settings->General->Advanced->Shared Clipboard (Bidirectional)

Reboot your virtual machine.

for me it solved the problem (it was set on Disabled), I had some machines working some not, so i checked settings in working ones they had bidirectional clipboard. Dont know if this was upgrade issue or... just double check your shared clipboard options.

Hope this helps someone.

VirtualBox V 4.1.20

nidla
  • 1,251
76

Start your VM then install Virtualbox Guest Addition
You can find this option under "Devices" on virtual box 4.2 or you can follow the explanations at How do I install Guest Additions in a VirtualBox VM?

Community
  • 1
soekarmana
  • 987
15

I had to do four steps:

  1. Install Virtual Box extension pack in host
  2. Activate shared clipboard in menu
  3. Install Virtual Box guest extensions in ubuntu guest
    • sudo apt-get install virtualbox-guest-dkms virtualbox-guest-utils virtualbox-guest-x11
  4. Reboot virtual machine
paragpallav
  • 3
jan
  • 253
4

In VirtualBox 4.x:

Start the Ubuntu instance, then in the VirtualBox menu at the top of the running instance window, Machine > Settings..., Advanced tab, change Clipboard Sharing to Bidirectional. It's set to Disabled by default.

Chris Moschini
  • 163
1

The summary of "Main OS and Virtual OS Integration":

  1. Install Vbox Guest Additions
  2. Enable Shared Clipboard
  3. Enable Drag'n'Drop
  4. Enable Shared Folder (optional)
Santosa Sandy
  • 836
  • 10
  • 23
1

I marked some text from firefox and tried to paste it into a terminal and it didn't work. I had guest additions installed, and also enabled bidirectional copy and paste and it still didn't work, but now I found the reason.

Apparently when I marked the text in firefox, additional information is also stored like the font and style. The terminal can not interpret this, so it doesn't seem to accept it. I pasted the text into a plain text editor (notepad++ in my case) then selected the text again and copied it. Now when I pasted it into the terminal it worked.

So this can also be a reason why copy&paste doesn't work, even if everything is correctly setup.

Using VirtualBox 4.3.12 with Ubuntu 14.04 x64 as the guest.

Devolus
  • 123
0

For VMWare 15, I had to pause / shutdown the machine and go to VM -> Settings -> Options tab -> Guest Isolation

From there you can check / uncheck Enable copy and pasteenter image description here

Danny
  • 431
0

in recent virtual box follow these instructions :

enter image description here

Badr Bellaj
  • 131
-1

For some reason I was not able to copy from my WindowsXP VM in VirtualBox to Ubuntu. However, I solved the problem by enabling a shared folder.

You can do that by going to Devices > Shared Folders > Shared Folder Settings in the alt menu on the VM window. After you set up a folder in the host, you can access it inside the VM in My Network Places:

enter image description here

Arthur Colombini Gusmão
  • 435