---
title: "Copy & paste options"
description: "TinyMCE copy and paste"
canonical_url: "https://www.tiny.cloud/docs/tinymce/latest/copy-and-paste/"
md_url: "https://www.tiny.cloud/docs/tinymce/6/copy-and-paste/index.md"
version: "6"
last_updated: "2022-11-30T01:26:11Z"
tokens: 1573
---
Important This page documents TinyMCE 6. For new projects, Tiny recommends using the latest, most up-to-date version. [See TinyMCE 8 documentation](../../latest/copy-and-paste/).
# Copy & paste options

## TinyMCE PowerPaste plugin

TinyMCE has built-in paste functionality, however PowerPaste is a premium plugin that provides improved paste support, including support for Microsoft Word, Microsoft Excel and Google Docs content. It also includes the option to clean or merge the styles when pasting content into the editor.

For information, see the [PowerPaste plugin](../introduction-to-powerpaste/).

> **Important:** The core paste functionality and PowerPaste share many options, although some have minor differences. The following options apply specifically to the core paste functionality. For example, the `paste_block_drop`, `paste_data_images`, `paste_remove_styles_if_webkit`, and `paste_webkit_styles` options are specific to the core functionality and do not apply to the PowerPaste plugin.

## Controlling how content is pasted

These options affect the way HTML content is processed when pasted in to the editor.

### `paste_as_text`

This option enables you to set the default state of the `Paste as text` menu item under the `Edit` menu dropdown. It’s disabled by default.

**Type:** `Boolean`

**Default value:** `false`

**Possible values:** `true`, `false`

#### Example: using `paste_as_text`

```js
tinymce.init({
  selector: 'textarea',  // change this value according to your HTML
  toolbar: 'paste',
  paste_as_text: true
});
```

### `paste_block_drop`

Due to browser limitations, it is not possible to filter content that is dragged and dropped into the editor. When `paste_block_drop` is set to true dragging and dropping content into the editor will be disabled. This prevents the unfiltered content from being introduced. Copy and paste is still enabled.

**Type:** `Boolean`

**Default value:** `false`

**Possible values:** `true`, `false`

#### Example: using `paste_block_drop`

```js
tinymce.init({
  selector: 'textarea',  // change this value according to your HTML
  paste_block_drop: false
});
```

### `paste_merge_formats`

This option enables the merge format feature when pasting content. This merges identical text format elements to reduce the number of HTML elements produced. For example: `<b>abc <b>bold</b> 123</b>` becomes `<b>abc bold 123</b>` since the inner format is redundant. This option is enabled by default but can be disabled if retaining nested or identical format elements is important.

**Type:** `Boolean`

**Default value:** `true`

**Possible values:** `true`, `false`

#### Example: using `paste_merge_formats`

```js
tinymce.init({
  selector: 'textarea',  // change this value according to your HTML
  toolbar: 'paste',
  paste_merge_formats: false
});
```

### `paste_tab_spaces`

This option controls how many spaces are used to represent a tab character in HTML when pasting plain text content. By default, when tab characters are pasted they will be converted into 4 sequential space characters.

**Type:** `Number`

**Default value:** `4`

#### Example: using `paste_tab_spaces`

```js
tinymce.init({
  selector: 'textarea',  // change this value according to your HTML
  toolbar: 'paste',
  paste_tab_spaces: 2
});
```

### `smart_paste`

The `smart_paste` function will:

- Detect text that resembles a URL and change the text to a hyperlink.
- Detect text that resembles the URL for an image and will try to replace the text with the image.

To disable the `smart_paste` functionality, set `smart_paste` to `false`. To configure which image file types are recognised, see [Image & file options - images_file_types](../file-image-upload/#images_file_types).

**Type:** `Boolean`

**Default value:** `true`

**Possible values:** `true`, `false`

#### Example: using `smart_paste`

```js
tinymce.init({
  selector: 'textarea',  // change this value according to your HTML
  toolbar: 'paste',
  smart_paste: false
});
```

## Filtering pasted content

These options control how the HTML content is filtered such that the content is eliminated or preserved when pasted into the editor.

### `paste_data_images`

This option specifies whether `data:url` images (inline images) should be removed or not from the pasted contents.

Setting `paste_data_images` to `true` will allow the pasted images, while setting it to `false` will disallow pasted images.

**Type:** `Boolean`

**Default value:** `true`

**Possible values:** `true`, `false`

#### Example: using `paste_data_images`

```js
tinymce.init({
  selector: 'textarea',  // change this value according to your HTML
  toolbar: 'paste',
  paste_data_images: false
});
```

### `paste_preprocess`

This option enables you to modify the pasted content before it gets inserted into the editor.

**Type:** `Function`

#### Example: using `paste_preprocess`

```js
tinymce.init({
  selector: 'textarea',  // change this value according to your HTML
  toolbar: 'paste',
  paste_preprocess: (editor, args) => {
    console.log(args.content);
    args.content += ' preprocess';
  }
});
```

### `paste_postprocess`

This option enables you to modify the pasted content before it gets inserted into the editor, but after it’s been parsed into a DOM structure.

**Type:** `Function`

#### Example: using `paste_postprocess`

```js
tinymce.init({
  selector: 'textarea',  // change this value according to your HTML
  toolbar: 'paste',
  paste_postprocess: (editor, args) => {
    console.log(args.node);
    args.node.setAttribute('id', '42');
  }
});
```

### `paste_remove_styles_if_webkit`

This option allows you to disable TinyMCE’s default paste filters for webkit styles.

**Type:** `Boolean`

**Default value:** `true`

**Possible values:** `true`, `false`

#### Example: using `paste_remove_styles_if_webkit`

```js
tinymce.init({
  selector: 'textarea',  // change this value according to your HTML
  toolbar: 'paste',
  paste_remove_styles_if_webkit: false
});
```

### `paste_webkit_styles`

This option allows you to specify styles you want to keep when pasting in WebKit. WebKit has a quirk where it will take all the computed CSS properties for an element and add them to spans within the editor. Since most users don’t want random spans added all over their document, we need to manually clean that up until the bug is fixed. This option defaults to `'none'` but can be set to `'all'` or a specific list of styles to retain.

**Type:** `String`

**Default value:** `'none'`

**Possible values:** `'none'`, `'all'` or a space separated list of styles

#### Example: using `paste_webkit_styles`

```js
tinymce.init({
  selector: 'textarea',  // change this value according to your HTML
  toolbar: 'paste',
  paste_webkit_styles: 'color font-size'
});
```