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.

Dragging email attachments is especially useful in Unity mode.

When you drag a file or folder between the host and a virtual machine, Workstation Player copies the file or folder to the location where you drop it. For example, if you drop a file on the desktop icon of a word processor, the word processor opens a copy of the original file. The original file does not include changes that you make to the copy.

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. On Linux and Solaris, the temp directory is /tmp/VMwareDnD. Save the file in a different directory to protect changes that you make.