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WordPad, Windows Mail, Microsoft
Outlook, Word, PowerPoint, and many
other email and word-processing programs
let you drag-and-drop as a faster alternative
to cut-and-paste. Figure 1.50 shows you
how. Move any amount of text, from single
character to epic poem. This technique
doesn’t involve the clipboard and won’t
change its contents.
Tips
- Press Ctrl as you drag to copy, rather
than move, the highlighted material.
- When you drag highlighted material near
the window’s edge, the document autoscrolls
until you move (usually jerk) away
from the edge. See the “Automatic
Scrolling” sidebar earlier in this chapter.
Intermediate formats
Another way to exchange data between programs
is to save it in a format that both the
source and target programs can read and
write. To read a list of addresses into a mailinglist
program from a spreadsheet or database,
for example, save the addresses in a CSVformat
file (a text file of comma-separated
values); then open it in the mailing-list program.
The source program’s Save As dialog
box lists the format types that you can save
(Figure 1.51). The target program usually
autoconverts the CSV file when you open it
with File > Open, but you may have to step
through a wizard to organize the incoming
data. Image-editing programs such as
Photoshop and Microsoft Paint can exchange
files in JPEG, GIF, TIFF, PNG, and other
popular graphic formats.
Import/export
Use import and export tools to transfer
large amounts of data or data in incompatible
formats. Most address-book, browser,
email, spreadsheet, database, and statistical
programs have Import and Export commands,
typically in the File menu. The commands
vary by program (they’re not part of
Windows), so read the documentation for
both the source and target programs.
Import/export operations can be routine—
most database and accounting programs
can skip the CSV step and export to the
native Excel format directly, for example—
but they’re superlative when no standard
exchange-format exists. If you want to try
new email and browser programs,
import/export is the only practical way to
transfer all your addresses, messages, bookmarks,
cookies, and other information
(Figure 1.52).
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OLE
OLE (pronounced oh-lay), for Object Linking
and Embedding, lets you insert self-updating
material from a source document in one
program into a target document running in
another. If you insert an Excel spreadsheet
as a linked object into a Word document, for
example, any changes that you make to the
spreadsheet separately in Excel appear in
the Word document automatically.
To insert an OLE object:
1. Open or create a document in a program
that supports OLE (WordPad, Word,
Excel, or PowerPoint, for example).
2. Click or move the cursor to where you
want the inserted object to appear.
3. Choose Insert > Object.
This command may appear elsewhere in
non-Microsoft programs.
4. In the Object dialog box, choose the
object type and link type that you want
to create (Figure 1.53).
5. Click OK.
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Figure 1.53 Click the Create New tab to insert a new
object; click the Create from File tab to insert an
existing file. Check Link to File if you want the data to
self-update when the source file is edited. The Result
box explains the inserted object’s behavior.
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Figure 1.50 Click in the middle of some highlighted text
(top), and drag it elsewhere within the same document
(bottom) or to a different window or program.
Figure 1.51 Excel’s Save As dialog box lets you save a
spreadsheet in formats other than the native Excel
format.
Figure 1.52 The Import wizard in the Mozilla Firefox
browser (free; www·mozilla·com) imports settings,
cookies, bookmarks (favorites), passwords, and other
items from Internet Explorer and other browsers.
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