Copy and Paste Options

In the Windows environment, we have the Paste Options (historically known as Paste Special) feature. Apple has a similar function, but all the examples/how to information in this post will be Windows based.

Paste Special is a really powerful tool that will help keep your sanity. When we select text, a picture, or really anything a chose to copy it…..we are getting whatever the human eye cannot see as well. Typically, this is only formatting, but it could be a virus, for example when you are copying from a public location like a website. Even if it is formatting, most of the time you do NOT want to bring it to your destination file, email, etc….

Ever spent a lot of time changing something you copied into the format of all the other stuff in your document or presentation? If you had chosen Paste Special — text only or no formatting — then you would automatically keep the formatting of your file. This is why some people can put together a presentation that looks really cohesive and others look like someone grabbed every font, color, or formatting option.

Best Practices

• Use Paste Special — no formatting, text only, image only, etc… most of the time. Yes, this means that you can still use Ctrl + C for copy but when you use Ctrl + V…click on the very little icon that appears at the end of your paste. This will let you decide how you want to paste it. If you use right click copy and then right click paste, that option shows automatically.
• Only copy exactly what you want — this means no extra spaces before or after. It is very frustrating when someone creates something like a spreadsheet or word processing document with sloppy copy and paste technique. It causes issues when attempting to use any automatic tools like Mail Merge, and users spend a lot of time removing the extra spaces.
• Paste as an “image” if you want to ensure it looks exactly like it did at the source. This means someone cannot select it as text, even if it looks like text to the human eye but keeps the formatting of your new file from impacting how it appears.