How to copy from Excalidraw to WhimsicalCopied!Link to this section

1. Open your Excalidraw drawing and select what you want to bring over.
2. Copy it with Cmd + C (Mac) or Ctrl + C (PC).
3. Open a Whimsical board and paste with Cmd + V (Mac) or Ctrl + V (PC).

This also works with older versions of Excalidraw and with apps that have Excalidraw built in, like the Obsidian Excalidraw plugin. Everything arrives as a single step, so one undo removes the whole paste.

What comes acrossCopied!Link to this section

ObjectsCopied!Link to this section

• Rectangles, diamonds and ellipses, with their labels
• Text
• Sticky notes, in the closest Whimsical sticky color
• Arrows, which become connectors that stay attached to their shapes and keep their labels, arrowheads, curves and elbows
• Lines. Two-point lines become connectors, and lines with more points become drawings.
• Pen drawings
• Frames, which become sections holding everything inside them
• Groups, including nested groups
• Images, with their crops and flips
• Web embeds (like YouTube), which become Whimsical link cards
• Diagrams made with Excalidraw's Mermaid-to-Excalidraw tool

FormattingCopied!Link to this section

• Arrowheads, including ERD endpoints like one, many and zero-or-one
• Dashed lines
• Text alignment and text size. Excalidraw's Small, Medium, Large and Extra large sizes map to matching Whimsical sizes.
• Colors, matched to the closest color in your board's palette

LimitationsCopied!Link to this section

• Fonts aren't carried over. All Excalidraw fonts, including the handwritten one, are shown in our Dinsical font.
• Colors are matched, not copied exactly. Transparency is dropped too, so shapes paste fully opaque. You can update your color theme to match your brand.
• Rounded rectangles become regular rectangles.
• Shapes and images snap to the nearest right angle. Text, sticky notes and frames paste upright.
• Filled drawings lose their fill. The outline stays.
• Some links are dropped. Links to other Excalidraw elements or to Obsidian notes don't come across.
• AI-generated embeds are skipped, and so are sticky note authors and dates.
• Images need to be part of the copy, and we support to 100 images load per paste.

Tips for a smooth migrationCopied!Link to this section

• Paste into a fresh Whimsical board first while you get a feel for it.
• If you see Couldn't paste selection, try copying fewer objects at a time.