Cut/Copy/Paste and the Clipboard

The “clipboard” is a concept familiar to most people who have used modern word processors. It is a piece of your computers memory which is set aside as a temporary storage space. Text can be “Cut” or “Copied” from your document into the clipboard. You can move to another part of the document or to another application entirely, and “Paste” this text at the new location.

The most common use for the clipboard is to move or copy text which has already entered into one part of the document to another part of the same document or to another document entirely.

This concept is probably best described with an example.

To do this, we begin with a test sentence

The big, red fox jumped over the lazy dog.

Using the mouse or keyboard, select the phrase “ big, red” (notice the space before “big” is selected).

Now select Edit->Copy from the menubar.

This has moved a copy of the selected text to the clipboard.

Now place the mouse cursor directly behind the word “lazy” and click once.

Now select Edit->Paste from the menubar.

The resulting sentence is:

The big, red fox jumped over the lazy big, red dog

The clipboard is not limited to text. The clipboard can contain tables, pictures, spreadsheets or any other type of information.

The Copy Command

The Copy command can be invoked 4 ways:

By selecting Edit->Copy from the menubar

By clicking on the toolbar.

Using the keyboard shortcut: Ctrl+C or the alternate keyboard shortcut: Ctrl+Insert

After the text is selected, click once with the right mouse button and hold the button down. A small popup menu will appear. Simply select Copy

The Copy command moves a copy of the selected data to the clipboard. The original data is unaffected.

The Cut Command

The Cut command can be invoked 4 ways:

By selecting Edit->Cut from the menubar

By clicking on the toolbar.

Using the keyboard shortcut: Ctrl+X or the alternate keyboard shortcut: Shift+Delete

After the text is selected, click once with the right mouse button and hold the button down. A small popup menu will appear. Simply select Cut

The Cut command moves a copy of the selected data to the clipboard. The selected data is then deleted from the document.

The Paste Command

The Paste command can be invoked 4 ways:

By selecting Edit->Paste from the menubar

By clicking on the toolbar.

Using the keyboard shortcut: Ctrl+V or the alternate keyboard shortcut: Shift+Insert

Place the cursor where the contents of the clipboard should be inserted. Click once with the right mouse button and hold the button down. A small popup menu will appear. Simply select Paste

The Paste command inserts a copy of all the data in the clipboard at the current position of the cursor. The clipboard is unaffected. (So another paste command will produce yet another copy of the data in the document.)

Note

If no text in the document is currently highlighted, the Paste command inserts the data at the current position of the cursor.

If there is selected text when the Paste command is executed, the selected text is replaced with the contents of the clipboard.

Tip

The clipboard is not limited to the bounds of the current document. If text is copied (or cut) from a document, this text can be pasted into another open document, or another application entirely.

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