How to copy from Google Spreadsheet without it editing the source data

Question

Every time I copy and paste from a Google Spreadsheet, it adds a double quote before and after everything, and duplicates every single double quote.

For example, if I copy:

This is a "string" of sorts.

And paste ANYWHERE else (I can reproduce it on Windows, Mac, Linux, Notepad++, SublimeText, Xcode...) it results into:

"This is a ""string"" of sorts."

How can I copy and paste so that A" results in A" instead of "A""?

EDIT: I am talking about when you copy an entire cell, if you enter edit mode in a cell and copy the contents, the copy works fine. But you cannot copy formula-based cells this way, or multiple cells.

Answer 1

I found a workaround for this:

Just replace all "\n" symbols (LF - Line feed or 0x0A in ASCII) that's represented by CHAR(10) in Formulas by "\r" symbols (CR - Carriage return or 0x0D in ASCII) that's represented by CHAR(13).

And when you copy and paste as plain text it will be without added quotes in it.

Here is formula to do it:

=SUBSTITUTE(A1,CHAR(10),CHAR(13))

Answer 2

This is most likely due to new lines or tab characters in your data. If so, you can wrap your formula or the cell you need as shown, in clean, for example: =clean(A1).

From the docs, clean does this:

Returns the text with the non-printable ASCII characters removed.

Answer 3

The "issue" is that Google Spreadsheet is putting valid CSV-formatted data into the clipboard.

The workaround is to publish the spreadsheet to the web (File -> Publish to Web) and copy out of that document instead.

It's not much of a solution but it can save you some time.

Answer 4

What just worked for me, after having tried copying a cell that was generated by a formula (with line breaks and some single quotes) and didn't work correctly pasting to NotePad and NotePad++, was copying to a Google Doc (or to Microsoft Word, but why do that instead?).

Google Doc and Word both displayed the wanted result.

Select what you want to copy from Google Sheets, Control-C to copy (or use the menu), make a new or open an existing Google Doc (or Microsoft Word), Control-V to paste, or use the menu.

Answer 5

My approach in this situation is to copy formula-generated cells (Ctrl-C) and values-paste them elsewhere on the sheet (Ctrl-Shift-V). The new cells are no longer formula-generated, so the approach described in the question works, in either of two forms:

1. Double-click, select all, copy

or

2. Click the formula bar, select all, copy

Either 1 or 2 requires copying one cell at a time; but for one or a few cells this is not too bad.

Answer 6

The function you're looking for is T() which returns string arguments as text. This should effectively treat the contents as if they were not calculated when you copy and paste. Some people have suggested using CHAR(13) instead of CHAR(10) but that won't show newlines in some environments, so I like this approach.

=T(SUBSTITUTE("This\nis\nsome\ntext.", "\n", CHAR(10)))

I hope it works for you.

Answer 7

Try pasting without formatting: Ctrl+Shift+V (or Command+Shift+V).

Answer 8

You can use combination of multiple answers which are here.

Lets say that you have your data in cells A1:A10 computed from formula.

Here are steps to copy them out:

• select cells A1:A10 and copy the content by ctrl + c
• click on B1 and press ctrl + shift + v or right click and select Past values only
• then click on B11 and to that cell enter formula =concatenate(B1:B10) this will "merge" the cells into one
• click on cell B11 and copy the content by ctrl + c
• click on C11 and press ctrl + shift + v or right click and select Past values only
• and finally double click on C11 and copy the content out to your file

Warning: I tested this only on string generated data by formula. If the output of your formula are numbers, I am not sure if this will work... Also for large datasets this may not work... but for me it worked with 100+ rows..

Also the concatenate function will merge the data so the result is one big chunk of text. You may need to insert on the end of each row some "token" which you will then replace with new line...

Answer 9

I recently had this same issue, and there's another workaround.

Instead of copying the data by highlighting the cell and using Ctrl+C or selecting Copy, instead, highlight the cell and then copy the data that's in the formula area instead. This won't add the extra quotes.

Answer 10

I was using a Google Spreadsheet to generate a YAML output from tabulated values and was also running into the issue that each cell (containing line breaks) was quoted when I copied the output column from the spreadsheet.

I found out that this can be worked around to some extend by adding a formula cell similar to the following to a separate spreadsheet:

=CONCATENATE(Output!X2:X)

(assuming that the cells you want to output are in column X starting from row 2 in spreadsheet Output) This formula cell will then contain the contents of all output cells concatenated into a single string cell (make sure to end each cell value with an explicit line break). If you copy that cell, the entire value will still be quoted, but these two quotes are obviously much easier to remove.

Answer 11

Got the solution right here.... (see example sheets file in this link)

To sum it up: If you can live without linebreaks in the text you are generating within a cell, then you will be able to paste without quotations. the line-breaking can then be done in the destination file.

Exhaustive example in the link above.