Danny, please refer to my comment below.
TLDR: Illustrator also copies the extended appearance of the text, and other apps treat it as an image, preferring it to text.
Use these apps’ dedicated 'Paste as text' commands.

Hey Adobe... Why is it that when I copy text from another program into Illustrator, it pastes correctly, but when I copy from Illustrator to another program, it pastes as an image? Is this intentional? What’s the benefit of this? It's not like you’re trying to make us practice typing! Can you at least explain why you guys haven't fixed this ridiculous issue yet?

So now as of 9/8/2023 my workaround of copying text out of Illustrator (Mac), pasting into TextEdit, and the copying THAT into my email (Outlook) no longer works. Now even TextEdit treats it as if I pasted a screen shot. No editable text at all. Now I have to open Word, paste without formatting, copy from there, go to where I need the text and paste it. Now I have to have Word open as well...
Thanks Adobe!

"Illustrator copies not just text, but the formatted text with an appearance, and most apps can’t handle it, obviously."
I can't think of one place where is this even useful - MASSIVE workflow oversight by Adobe as most of what we do is copy and paste text?

"If you want to paste only the text contents, you should use Paste as Text commands (or similar).
Almost ALL apps do NOT have this outside of Adobe - obviously, as they assume users are copy and pasting just text?!

Google Sheets are a bit dumber, they try to preserve the appearance and paste it as an image,
…its adobe that a “bit dumber” - why would theyor ANY OTHER PLATFORM want to copy text as an image into a text based platform.

"Some apps don’t have the ability to paste text though.”
Please pass this conversation and issue along to someone with a bit more experience

Illustrator copies not just text, but the formatted text with an appearance, and most apps can’t handle it, obviously.

If you want to paste only the text contents, you should use Paste as Text commands (or similar).
Most apps have it. Excel has, but it doesn’t need it, it is smart enough to paste the text contents only by default. Google Sheets are a bit dumber, they try to preserve the appearance and paste it as an image, unless you use Paste Special > Values Only — Ctrl+Shift+V (may differ).

Some apps don’t have the ability to paste text though.

Windows 10 does not have this option from the box, so they have in as a PowerToys plugin:
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/powertoys/paste-as-plain-text

Macs has its own way to allow pasting as text, hare is a first article form Google about it:
http://eshop.macsales.com/blog/72298-paste-non-formatted-text-mac/

Perhaps Illustrator should also have Copy as Text... but it’s hardly a better option and is even more a hassle.

Can't copy basic text from Illustrator to into anything as text - always turns it into an image - really?!?!

Please fix this - can't believe its gone this long without response out fix

You need to Paste and Match Style
→ Cmd + Alt + Shift + V

Please fix this, it's maddening

I'd like to see a menu item: Edit > Copy as Plain Text and/or Edit > Copy as RTF. RTF would be my preference.

I currently paste into TextEdit, then copy again and paste into the final destination.

A quick workaround I found was to paste it into PureRef and recopy it from there and into google docs. Stupid but it works.

Total ball-ache but.... save as pdf, open in acrobat, (if necessary run OCR) then copy / paste and re-organise/re-format -

This really needs fixing.
For now, in OSX, the only workaround we found is to paste in a "new email" subject and from there, recopy to other editors.

Please fix this!

How can they mess this up after so many years. for people who works moving text from here and there this is like ****. Somebody has any solutions for this?

yes it is still unsolved and ridiculously maddening

Is this problem still unsolved?

I have a giant project where this has slowed us down to a crawl. Is there any way I can copy text out of my PDF's and drop it into a word document without it being placed as a graphic?

This is driving me crazy too! It used to be doable. Now I paste into Word with Paste Special>unformatted text, which is a huge pain, but some other apps don't give you that option! So I paste into Word as editable text, and then copy to take it to a third app. If not being able to paste into other apps as editable text is a new "feature," it's a really bad one!

Do you have some kind of clipboard manager installed?