This tutorial is divided in sections because there are multiple methods to create a copy of a file on Windows.
Copy and Paste
To create a copy of a file by copying and pasting it, follow the following steps:
1: navigate to where the file you want to duplicate is located.
2: right click on the file to display its context menu.
3: click on the option "Copy."
4: navigate to the folder where you want to place the copy of the file. It's also possible to place it on the same folder if you want.
5: right click on an empty space in File Explorer's main pane.
6: click on the option "Paste." The file will be duplicated, and a copy of the file will be placed in the target folder.
Note: if you can't find the "Paste" option, it's possible you haven't copied the file, or that you're trying to paste in a special location that isn't a folder, such as "This PC."
When the operating system duplicates a file, it creates a new blank file and starts copying all the bytes of the original copy to the new copy. The more bytes the file has, the longer this will take. If you are copying small files like plain text files, this will be very quick, but large files like video files can take a while, specially if they are larger than one gigabyte. The duplication speed also depends a lot on the read speed and write speed of the devices where the files are stored. For example, an SSD is much faster than a HDD. If you copy from one to the other, the bottleneck will be the slowest device.
Pasting the file will paste it with the same filename as the file that was copied, e.g. if you copy a filed named "Cat," the pasted file will also be called "Cat." Two files can't have the exact same name in the same folder, so if you copy and paste a file to the same folder, Windows will add " - Copy" to its name (before the file extension), e.g. "Cat - Copy."
Creating a copy of a folder will also create a copy of all its contents, including all its files and subfolders, all files and subfolders inside those subfolders, and so on and so on until it has duplicated all descendants of the tree hierarchy.
Keyboard Shortcuts
The keyboard shortcuts for copy and paste are Ctrl+C and Ctrl+V respectively. To use them:
1: click on the file that you want to copy to select it.
2: press Ctrl+C to copy it.
3: navigate to where you want to create a copy.
4: press Ctrl+V to paste it.
Drag and Drop
You can copy and paste a file by dragging it, holding the Ctrl key, then dropping it. This is works exactly the same way as moving a file, and works in all situations that moving a file would work, the only difference is the modifier key Ctrl.
See [How to Move a File on Windows 11] for details.
While the modifier key is held, Windows will indicate that it has switched from "move" mode to "copy" mode by displaying the text "Copy to <target location>" under the mouse cursor.