Chapter 4: Working with Excel Ranges and Tables
4
About the Office Clipboard
Whenever you cut or copy information from a Windows program, Windows stores the information on
the Windows Clipboard, which is an area of your computer’s memory. Each time that you cut or copy
information, Windows replaces the information previously stored on the Clipboard with the new infor-
mation that you cut or copied. The Windows Clipboard can store data in a variety of formats. Because
Windows manages information on the Clipboard, it can be pasted to other Windows applications,
regardless of where it originated.
Microsoft Office has its own Clipboard (the Office Clipboard), which is available only in Office programs.
To view or hide the Office Clipboard, click the dialog box launcher in the bottom-right corner of the
Home ➪ Clipboard group.
Whenever you cut or copy information in an Office program, such as Excel or Word, the program
places the information on both the Windows Clipboard and the Office Clipboard. However, the pro-
gram treats information on the Office Clipboard differently from the way it treats information on the
Windows Clipboard. Instead of replacing information on the Office Clipboard, the program appends
the information to the Office Clipboard. With multiple items stored on the Clipboard, you can then
paste the items either individually or as a group.
You can find out more about this feature (including an important limitation) in “Using the Office
Clipboard to paste” later in this chapter.
Copying by using shortcut menu commands
If you prefer, you can use the following shortcut menu commands for copying and pasting:■ (^) Right-click the range and choose Copy (or Cut) from the shortcut menu to copy the
selected cells to the Clipboard.
■ (^) Right-click and choose Paste from the shortcut menu that appears to paste the
Clipboard contents to the selected cell or range.
For more control over how the pasted information appears, right-click the destination cell
and use one of the Paste icons in the shortcut menu (see Figure 4.8).
Instead of using Paste, you can just activate the destination cell and press Enter. If you use
this technique, Excel removes the copied information from the Clipboard so that it can’t be
pasted again.
Copying by using shortcut keys
The copy and paste operations also have shortcut keys associated with them:
■ (^) Ctrl+C copies the selected cells to both the Windows Clipboard and the Office
Clipboard.
■ (^) Ctrl+X cuts the selected cells to both the Windows Clipboard and the Office
Clipboard.
■ (^) Ctrl+V pastes the Windows Clipboard contents to the selected cell or range.