Microsoft Edge Canary now supports Smart Copy for tables, text, and more

Smart Copy keeps fancy formatting intact when you copy from websites and paste it into other programs.

What you need to know

• Microsoft Edge Canary now supports a new Smart Copy feature.
• The feature allows you to copy tables and content with its formatting.
• You can then paste the content into other programs while retaining its original formatting.

Microsoft is rolling out support for Smart Copy to Microsoft Edge Canary (via Techdows). The feature allows you to copy content, such as charts and images, and then paste that content elsewhere while retaining its formatting. Microsoft first announced the feature in March, and it is rolling out now to Microsoft Edge Canary.

"Smart copy makes it easier to select, copy, and paste content that you find across the web, maintaining source site's formatting, spacing and text," says Microsoft in its post announcing the feature. As outlined by Microsoft, you can "Use your mouse to select any area or content (including charts, images, etc.) and when you paste, you will get the option to paste as an image or to retain the original source formatting, saving you valuable time."

Ctrl+Shift+X invokes it - available only in Edge Canary.

— Sumit - Insider MVP (@_sumitdhiman) November 23, 2020

Twitter user and Windows Insider MVP "sumitdhimn" shared a video of the feature. In the video, a selection is made of a table on a website and then pasted into Microsoft Edge. The table pasted into Word looks exactly like the table from the source website. Manually creating a table or formatting pasted content into a table can be a lengthy process without features like Smart Copy.

You can use Smart Copy by right-clicking content and selecting the Smart Copy option or using Ctrl+Shift+X.