VMware Workstation is the industry standard desktop hypervisor for running virtual machines on Linux or Windows PCs. It has multiple licensing options depending on your use case. In this article, you will learn the various ways to copy files from host to VMware Workstation VM. Please see how to Copy Deployment Share between Servers without using linked Deployment Shares, how to Associate SSH Public key with Azure Linux VM, and how to Deploy a React Application on Netlify.

You can use the drag-and-drop feature, the copy-and-paste feature, shared folders, and mapped drives to transfer files and text between the host system and virtual machines and between virtual machines.

Move files from the host to the VMware Workstation

Using the Drag-and-Drop Feature

You can use the drag-and-drop feature to move files and directories, email attachments, plain text, formatted text, and images between the host system and virtual machines. You can drag files or directories between the following locations.

File managers, such as Windows Explorer, on the host system and virtual machines.
A file manager to an application that supports drag-and-drop.
Applications, such as zip file managers, which support drag-and-drop extraction of individual files.
Different virtual machines.

Note: You cannot enable or turn off the drag-and-drop feature for a remote virtual machine.

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Drag-and-Drop Requirements and Restrictions

Below are the requirements that must be met for the drag-and-drop feature to work correctly

Initially, the application opens a copy of the file that is stored in the temp directory. On Windows, the temp directory is specified in the %TEMP% environment variable.

Turn Off the Drag-and-Drop Feature

The drag-and-drop feature is turned on by default when you create a virtual machine in Workstation Pro.

To prevent dragging and dropping between a virtual machine and the host system, turn off the drag-and-drop feature.

Note: The VM must be switched off to disable this feature. Select the virtual machine and select VM > Settings.

On the Options tab, select Guest Isolation. Deselect Enable drag and drop.

Click OK to save your changes.

Copy and Paste Feature

You can cut, copy, and paste text between virtual machines and between applications running in virtual machines. You can also cut, copy, and paste images, plain text, formatted text, and email attachments between applications running on the host system and applications running on virtual machines.

You cannot turn on or off the copy and paste feature for a remote virtual machine.

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Copy and Paste Requirements and Restrictions

The copy-and-paste feature has certain requirements and restrictions. Please see how to copy and paste between a host machine and VirtualBox VM, and How to install Windows Server 2022 on VMware Workstation.

Install VMware Tools in a virtual machine to use the copy-and-paste feature.
The copy-and-paste feature works with Linux and Windows hosts and Linux, Windows, and Solaris 10 guests only.
The copy and paste feature requires Linux hosts and guests to run X Windows and Solaris 10 guests to run an Xorg X server and JDS/Gnome.
Copying and pasting email attachments is restricted to images or files smaller than 4 MB.
Copying and pasting plain text and formatted text (including the formatting) is restricted to amounts less than 4MB.
Copying and pasting text is restricted to text in languages that can be represented by Unicode characters.
Workstation Pro uses the PNG format to encode images that are copied and pasted. Copying and pasting images is restricted to images smaller than 4 MB after conversion to PNG format.
You cannot copy and paste files between virtual machines.

Demonstrating copy and paste

To demonstrate copy and paste, enter a very long filename that VMware Workstation cannot handle. This way, you will see that this function works correctly.

copy-file-from-host-to-vmware-workstation

Turn Off the Copy and Paste Feature

The copy-and-paste feature is enabled by default as discussed above when you create a virtual machine in Workstation Pro.

To prevent copying and pasting between a virtual machine and the host system, you will have to disable the copy-and-paste feature.

To do this, select the virtual machine and select VM > Settings.

On the Options tab, select Guest Isolation.

Disable Copy and Paste on VMware Workstation

Deselect Enable copy and paste. Click OK to save your changes.

You can use shared folders to share files between virtual machines and the host system. The directories that you add as shared folders can be on the host system, or they can be network directories that are accessible from the host computer.

You cannot open a file in a shared folder from more than one application at a time. For example, do not open the same file in an application on the host operating system and in another application in the guest operating system. If one of the applications writes to the file, data might be corrupted.

To do this, select the virtual machine and select VM > Settings. Click on Shared Folders.

As you can see below. This is disabled