Using the Office Clipboard


When you cut or copy data in a non-Office program, Windows stores the data in a special memory location called the Clipboard. When you run the Paste command, Windows grabs the data from the Clipboard and adds it to the document. This has worked well for Windows users for many years, but all of us have run into the Clipboard's glaring weakness: it can hold only one item at a time. If you cut or copy something else, the previous data is discarded.

The Office programmers have been trying to fix this weakness since Office 2000 by implementing a Clipboard replacement called the Office Clipboard that's capable of storing multiple cut or copied items. Early incarnations of the Office Clipboard were clunky and barely usable, so they were ignored by most users. The Office 2003 version of the Office Clipboard is the best one yet, but it's still a relatively limited tool.

Like its Windows cousin, at its most basic level the Office Clipboard is a don't-reinvent-the-wheel device. In other words, if you've created something that workswhether it's a bit of polished prose, an attractive graphic, or a complex worksheet formulaand you'd like to reuse it, don't waste time re-creating the data from scratch. Instead, you can send the existing data to the Office Clipboard and then insert a copy of it into a different document or even into a different application altogether.

Unlike its Windows cousin, the Office Clipboard can store up to 24 items at a time, even items cut or copied from non-Office programs. The Office Clipboard is implemented as part of the Task pane and it appears in the following circumstances:

  • When you cut or copy two items in a row without pasting

  • When you select Edit, Office Clipboard

  • When you select Clipboard from the Task pane menu

  • When you press Ctrl+C twice

Figure 6.1 shows an example of the Office Clipboard with several items stored. The items are listed with the most recently added at the top of the list.

Figure 6.1. The Office 2003 version of the Office Clipboard can store up to 24 items.


Moving Multiple Items in Word

If you want to move multiple items in a Word document, you could cut each one and then paste them from the Office Clipboard. However, Word also offers a special AutoText entry called Spike that's a bit easier to use. For each item you want to move, select it and press Ctrl+F3. In each case, Word removes the item from the document and appends it to the Spike. To paste everything from the Spike, type spike and press Enter (or press Ctrl+Shift+F3).


Here are the techniques to use to work with items on the Office Clipboard:

  • To paste the top item, select Edit, Paste, or press Ctrl+V. (The top item in the Office Clipboard corresponds to the current item in the Windows Clipboard.)

  • To paste any item, click it.

Paste Is Office Only

Although you can add items to the Office Clipboard from any application, you can paste Office Clipboard items only to Office applications.


  • To paste all the items stored in the Office Clipboard, click Paste All.

Paste All Is Disabled

If the Paste All button is disabled, it means the Office Clipboard contains a mix of data formats, at least one of which can't be pasted into the document you're working with. For example, in Access you can't paste any nontext data into a text-only field.


  • To remove an item from the Office Clipboard, right-click it and then click Delete.

  • To remove all the items from the Office Clipboard, click Clear All.

Closing Office Clears the Office Clipboard

When you shut down all your running Office programs, the Office Clipboard gets cleared out. If you have data you want to preserve, you must keep at least one Office program running at all times.


Setting Office Clipboard Options

If you plan to use the Office Clipboard regularly, it comes with a few options that enable you to control some aspects of its behavior. To see these settings, click the Options button:

  • Show Office Clipboard AutomaticallyWhen you activate this option, the Office Clipboard appears automatically when you cut or copy two items in a row without pasting.

  • Show Office Clipboard Automatically When Ctrl+C Pressed TwiceWhen you activate this option, you can display the Office Clipboard by pressing Ctrl+C twice in succession.

  • Collect Without Showing Office ClipboardWhen you activate this option, the Office Clipboard remains active, but it doesn't appear until you display the Clipboard taskbar. If you deactivate this option and you deactivate Show Office Clipboard Automatically, then the Office Clipboard is active only when the Clipboard task pane is displayed in at least one Office application.

Deactivating the Office Clipboard

In other words, if you don't want to use the Office Clipboard at all, you must do three things: deactivate the Show Office Clipboard Automatically option, deactivate the Collect Without Showing Office Clipboard option, and turn off the Clipboard task pane in all Office applications.


  • Show Office Clipboard Icon on TaskbarWhen you activate this option, an icon for the Office Clipboard appears in the taskbar's notification area.

  • Show Status Near Taskbar When CopyingWhen you activate this option, balloon text appears near the Office Clipboard's notification area icon. This text tells you the number of items on the Office Clipboard and whether the collection was successful.

Pasting Data in a Different Format

If the Office Clipboard has a glaring weakness of its own, it's that it can't paste data in different formats. You can occasionally use the Paste Options smart tag to select the paste format, but this aspect of Office 2003 is inconsistent and poorly implemented. If you want to control the format, you need to return to the Windows Clipboard.

Clipboard data usually has a default format that's used when you select the Paste command. For example, if you send a piece of a Paint image to the Clipboard and then paste it into Word, the image is inserted using the bitmap format. However, there are often multiple formats for a given data type. An Excel worksheet range can be copied as RTF text, a bitmap, HTML, a Worksheet object, and more.

If you'd like to use a different format when you paste data, the Office applications all have a Paste Special command on the Edit menu. Selecting this command displays a dialog box similar to the one shown in Figure 6.2. Here, the As box lists the various formats that are available. You select the one you want and click OK. (However, you need to be careful that you don't embed the data. In many cases, the first item shown in the As list is an Object format. If you select this item, Windows pastes the data as an embedded object. I'll discuss this in more detail when I talk about linking and embedding later in this chapter.)

Figure 6.2. The Paste Special dialog box gives you access to the other formats available with the data you're pasting from the Clipboard.


Using the Clipboard Contents in a Replace Operation

The Replace command that appears on the Edit menu of the Office application is normally used to replace text or formatting. However, you can also use it to replace text with an image or just about any other data by using the Clipboard. For example, you might want to replace all instances of the word "Time" with an image of a clock; or you may want to replace some instances of your company name with your company logo. Here are the steps to follow:

1.

Copy the data that you want to use to replace the text.

2.

In the Office document containing the text, select Edit, Replace.

3.

In the Find What text box, type the text you want to replace.

4.

In the Replace With text box, type ^c (that's the caret symbol (^) followed by the letter c). This symbol represents the contents of the Clipboard.

5.

For each instance you want to replace, click Find Next and then click Replace. (Alternatively, click Replace All to replace all the instances.)

6.

Click Close.



Tricks of the Microsoft Office Gurus
Tricks of the Microsoft Office Gurus
ISBN: 0789733692
EAN: 2147483647
Year: 2003
Pages: 129

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