Users of alternative browsers often blame Internet Explorer for the missing 'Paste and Go' feature. That feature is really convenient: you can copy a URL from some text, document or another webpage, and then go to that url in a new tab with one click. Most modern browsers have the 'Paste and Go' feature in the context menu of the address bar. For example, this is how it is implemented in Google Chrome:
In this article, I would like to show you the Paste and Go functionality that already exists in Internet Explorer and how you can use it.
Microsoft implemented Paste and Go functionality in Internet Explorer 9, so IE10 and IE11 also have it, but they added it in a different way. You will not find a menu item for Paste and Go in the context menu of the address bar.
To perform the Paste and Go action in Internet Explorer, you can use:
- the Ctrl + Shift + L keyboard shortcut. Copy some url in the clipboard and press these hotkeys. Internet Explorer will navigate to the url from the clipboard!
- the context menu of the New Page tab. There, you will find the "Go to copied address" item which is just Paste and Go described differently.
Closing words
Throughout its long history, Internet Explorer has been mocked many times by power users for its poor feature set. But newer versions of IE are a different story. Now you know that the Paste and Go feature is already available in Internet Explorer since IE9.
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that is so lame to have to use the keyboard for paste & go requiring more time and steps then just clicking the damn go arrow. I am using IE recently because I am tired of the excessive processor use & numerous tracking cookies with chrome. That being said I wish Microsoft would get with the ‘paste & go’ & ‘paste & search ‘ feature in a way that is expedient & efficient.
Actually, all you need to do is… copy your link (right-click it and ‘copy shortcut’), then open a new tab, and… right-click on the new tab page background. You will get an option to ‘Go to copied address’. No keyboard involved.
I use “Copy Image URL” in Chrome a lot. Got anything for that in IE? In IE (using IE11 here), “Copy Shortcut” only copies image urls when they are hrefs attached to an image.
No need to answer. This tiny extension works: http://www.donationcoder.com/forum/index.php?topic=26205.0
This is from ten years ago, so I assumed the “IETools” folder for these little html files should instead go into AppData\Roaming. I only used the one for Copy Image URL, and the DWORD “Context” value should be decimal 2 as shown on the pop-up image, and not the value 10 described in the article (I think the author might have temporarily in a binary frame of mind)
Found another way of copying image urls in IE that was available perhaps for a long time.
The context menu popped on images shows the “Copy” option. Not only does this put the image bitmap
on the clipboard, it also puts the image url! Oh well.