One thing you'll do regularly in Windows is move data around: copy webpage text to an email message, put graphics-editor images in a word-processing document, move paragraphs around in a text file, export spreadsheet rows to a database, embed a chart in a presentation slide, and so on. Windows gives you a few ways to do so.

Cut, copy, and paste

Cut, copy, and paste, which are second nature to experienced Windows users, are used to organize documents, folders, and disks.

Cut-and-paste removes (cuts) information and places it on the clipboard so that it can be moved (pasted) elsewhere. Cutting deletes the data from its original location.

Copy-and-paste copies information to the clipboard so that it can be duplicated (pasted) elsewhere. Copying leaves the original data intact (nothing visible happens).

You'll find Cut, Copy, and Paste commands in a program's Edit menu (Figure 1.48), but each program may handle these operations differently. In Windows Explorer, for example, you can copy or move files and folders from one disk or folder to another. In Word, you can copy or move text or graphics to another part of a document or to a different document. In Internet Explorer, you can only copy material from webpages, not cut it.

To cut:

1. Select (highlight) the material to remove.
2. Choose Edit > Cut.
or
Press Ctrl+X.
or
Right-click the selection and choose Cut.

To copy:

1. Select (highlight) the material to copy.
2. Choose Edit > Copy.
or
Press Ctrl+C.
or
Right-click the selection and choose Copy.

To paste:

1. Click the mouse (or move the cursor to) where you want to the material to appear.
2. Choose Edit > Paste.
or
Press Ctrl+V.
or
Right-click and choose Paste.

If you mean to copy (Ctrl+C) something and accidentally cut (Ctrl+X) it instead, or if you paste something in the wrong place, you can recover by undoing your action.

To undo a cut or paste:

• Immediately after you cut or paste, choose Edit > Undo (or press Ctrl+Z).

Tips

• Keyboard shortcuts save time, but they're especially useful when the Edit menu is unavailable (Figure 1.49).
• Many programs have an Edit > Paste Special command that pastes, links, or embeds the clipboard contents in a document in the format you specify. The Paste Special command in Word, for example, lets you strip all formatting from pasted text, for example.

Figure 1.48 If nothing is selected, the Cut and Copy commands are dimmed.

Figure 1.49 In windows that have no Edit menu, such as this dialog box, you can cut, copy, and paste by using keyboard shortcuts or the shortcut (right-click) menu.

The Clipboard The clipboard is the invisible area of memory where Windows stores cut or copied data, where it remains until it's overwritten when you cut or copy something else. This scheme lets you paste the same thing multiple times in different places. You can transfer information from one program to another provided that the second program can read data generated by the first. A little experimenting shows that you often can combine dissimilar data; you can paste text from Notepad or Word into Photoshop, for example. Note that you can't paste something that you've deleted or cleared (as opposed to cut), because Windows doesn't place that something on the clipboard. If you're a writer, editor, researcher, or graphic artist, try something more powerful than the standard clipboard: ClipCache Pro ($25 U.S.; www·clipcache·com), ClipMate ($35 U.S.; www·thornsoft·com), Clipboard Recorder (free; www·lw-works·com), or Ditto (free; http://ditto-cp·sourceforge·net). These alternatives let you save, organize, combine, preview, and control many persistent clips.