Paste Special..

Paste Special

In honor of Valentine’s Day, February’s Tip of the month is Paste Special. 

One of the most fundamental features of windows software applications is Cut/Copy and Paste.  This features works in any Windows software.  You can copy and paste from one page to another in word – or from one document to another.  Or you can copy from one software application and paste it into another (Excel to PowerPoint). 

However, sometimes, the document you are working on has a format which is unlike the other document.  For example:

          Document 1 is a memo.  You need to include a few paragraphs of the proposal from the memo.  Times Roman font, 12 points, single line spacing.

Document 2 is a proposal.  However, document 2 uses Arial font, 10 points 1-½ spaces.

If you want Document 2 to retain the Arial font 10 points, you must copy the text from Document 1 and paste, special as text… to Document 2.  This will nicely copy the text, but the format will remain the same as the memo (Arial 10 points).  If you simply copy the information then the original font will overwrite the existing font.  

 

 

There are several Paste options:

·         Keep source formatting

·         Merge formatting

·         Text only

As a result, keep source formatting would retain the original formatting (from document 1).  Where merge formatting would combine the formatting of both documents.  However, what you want in this case is Text only where the formatting of the new document is retained.

So, do something special this holiday and use Copy, Paste Special.