Pasting into Blogger

It sounds like a cool hack: draft your post in your favorite app, photos and all, then paste that into the Blogger editor. ¶ 

Grab that thing you're quoting from the web and paste into the post. ¶ 

The good news is that this will usually work (with some quirks), but you need to take extra steps to protect your blog from junk code.

Pasting is a shortcut that comes with some disadvantages. The most reliable, error-proof way to add an image is via the Insert Image tool on Blogger's editing toolbar.

The Insert Image menu

Junk code

Pasting formatted text into Blogger will bring with it formatting codes that can slow down your page loads and even deform your blog.

There are two ways to fix this. You can paste as unformatted text (Ctrl + Shift + V in Windows, Command + Shift + V on a Mac).

Or you can paste, select everything you pasted, and apply the "remove formatting" tool from the editing toolbar in Blogger.

That's the last tool on the right, It looks like an italicized T with a slash through it.

You'll want to use the second method if your selection includes an image or a hyperlink. The first method will fail to post the image, and will strip the text of any links.

Whichever method you use, you may find that the text has lost any spot formatting (such as italics) and has extra line returns or other formatting changes. Restore the formatting in Blogger's editor.

Images

Pasting from the web generally preserves the image's original URL. That may not be located in your account, or even in Blogger. If the image is deleted from that location, it will vanish from your blog.

Pasting from your device or from a document, even one hosted online, will generally upload a copy of the image into Blogger, as if you had used the Upload option from the Insert Image menu on your toolbar. 

Upload can get an image into your blog.

Unless you are pasting from another Blogger blog, pasted images will likely misbehave when you format them. They won't have all of the positioning code that Blogger expects.

• Images may jump to the very top or bottom of the blog post when you work with them. Reposition them once you have formatted them the way you want (size, alignment, metadata, caption).
• Adding a caption, even a blank one, can help.
• The formatting will add the expected codes and cause the images to stay put once you reposition them where you want them. 

You may be able to copy and paste image files directly into your blog from your device. (That works on a Mac: I no longer use Windows so I haven't tested that. Let us know in a comment.)

Pasting images may fail, depending on the source. They won't come over from Google Docs, for example.

There is no trick or workaround if the image paste fails.

No names

A final note about pasted images. Upload an image into Blogger using the editor, and the image itself will have a long web address ending in the file name.

The name can be useful if you are trying to locate it in HTML mode, and Google has said having a descriptive name in the URL helps search engines to identify the image.

However, pasted images do not have this file name. If a file name is important to you, do not use this method to add images to your blog. Use the Insert Image tool in the editor instead.

Wish list

What if when you pasted, Google stripped away all the junk code, added the positioning code to images, and retained the spot formatting and file name (if any), all without you having to do anything else to it?

A guy can dream.

Postering photo: Cottonbro Studio/Pexels