How to Copy & Paste Everyone seems to know how to copy & paste except you? How are you supposed to know this stuff? This web page will teach you 4 different ways to copy & paste. You will be the expert showing newbies how things are done quicker. Even if you already know how, there are some tricks here that you may not have picked up yet. Copy from one place, and paste in another with emails, online forms, webpages, text documents, word documents, etc ... You can paste into the same document to change it around, or into a different document, or into a whole different type of document. Here is how. Try it now!

Here is some space to practice selecting text. Also you can select text almost anywhere. First you need to know how to Select Text. When you select text it becomes highlighted. Way 1 to select text: Try selecting some of the text in this paragraph ... Move the mouse to the beginning of the text you want. Press and hold the Left mouse button. slide the mouse along while still holding the left button down. The text is starting to hilight! Now when the right amount of text is highlighted, release the left mouse button. The text is still highlighted. You have selected the text. Try selecting text again with more than one row of text. Way 2 to select text: Move the mouse to the beginning of the text you want. Press and release the Left mouse button. (Do not worry if this does not show a flashing vertical line, keep going. The flashing vertical line only shows in editable text areas, but you can select text in most other places as well.) After releasing the mouse button, you can slide the mouse out of the way if you like, so the mouse icon is not covering the text. Next press and hold the Shift key. While keeping the Shift key down, use the arrow keys, or Home key, or End key, or Page Up key, or Page Down key to move the cursor around. The text is hilighting from your starting point to wherever you go with the cursor movement keys. Note, you can hold down the Ctrl key and use the right or left arrow keys to highlight a word at a time instead of just one letter at a time. Now when the right amount of text is highlighted, you are ready for the next step. Way 3 to select text: A quick way if you only want to select one word, is to double-click in the middle of the word. That means you move the mouse cursor on the middle of the word, and then quickly with the left mouse button press and release and press and release again. When you double-click a word, the whole word will be selected along with the spaces after it. Way 4 to select text: A quick way if you need to select a whole paragraph, is to tripple-click in the middle of the paragraph. That means you move the mouse cursor on the middle of the paragraph, and then press and release the left mouse button three times very quickly. When you tripple-click a paragraph, the text between the preceeding carriage return and the following carriage return will all be selected. Way 5 to select text: This way only works in programs that have an "edit" pull down menu, and a lot of them do. This way selects all the text in the current window or document ... Move the mouse over the window containing the text you want. Left click on the text (and release the mouse button). Pull down the edit menu at the top of the program by Left clicking "edit". Now Left click "Select All" on the pull down menu. The entire document is highlited, that shows it is selected. Way 6 to select text: This way also selects all the text in the current window or document ... Move the mouse over the window containing the text you want. This time use the Right mouse button (NOT the button under your Right index finger, the button under your right Middle finger) to Right click on the text (and release the mouse button). There will be a pop up menu beside the mouse. Now Left click "Select All" on the pop up menu. The entire document is highlited, that shows it is selected. Way 7 to select text: This way selects all the text in the current window or document ... Move the mouse over the window containing the text you want. Left click on the text (and release the mouse button). Hold down the Ctrl key, keep it down and press the A key. The entire document is highlited, that shows it is selected. Try Ctrl A inside the practice box at the right, and again right here in this sentence. Ctrl A is a shortcut key combination. A way to remember shortcut key combinations is to pull down the edit menu. On the edit pull down menu, beside Select All it says Ctrl+A as a reminder of the shortcut key combination for Select All.

Here is some space to practice the select & copy steps. Also you can select & copy from almost anywhere. The Next step is Copy. Copy doesn't really do anything to the document. It just tells the computer that you want to do something with the text that you just selected. So the computer kind of keeps that text in mind for a little while. After you do the Copy step, the text doesn't need to stay highlighted, the computer is still remembering that text for a while. But right now the text needs to be selected (highlighted) to do the Copy. Way 1 to copy: This way only works in programs that have an "edit" pull down menu ... After selecting some text, pull down the edit menu at the top of the program by Left clicking "edit". Now Left click "Copy" on the pull down menu. The selected text is now "copied". We will Paste it later. Way 2 to copy: Move the mouse over the window containing the highlighted text. This time use the Right mouse button to Right click on the window (and release the mouse button). There will be a pop up menu beside the mouse. Now Left click "Copy" on the pop up menu. The selected text is now "copied". Way 3 to copy: After selecting some text, while holding down the Ctrl key press the C key then release both keys. The selected text is now "copied". (There is a reminder of the Ctrl+C shortcut key combination beside "Copy" on the edit pull down menu.) See Drag & Drop below for a 4th way to copy.

Here is some space to practice copy & paste. Although you can copy from almost anywhere, to paste you need an editable area like this, or an email, or a text document, or a word processing document. The Final step is Paste. Paste inserts the selected and copied text into the document. Way 1 to paste: This way only works in programs that have an "edit" pull down menu ... After selecting and copying some text, Left click where you want the text to go. Then pull down the edit menu at the top of the program by Left clicking "edit". Now Left click "Paste" on the pull down menu. The copied text is now "pasted" into the document. Way 2 to paste: After selecting and copying some text, Left click anywhere to unhighlight the text, then Right click where you want the text to go (and release the mouse button). There will be a pop up menu beside the mouse. Now Left click "Paste" on the pop up menu. The copied text is now "pasted". Way 3 to paste: After selecting and copying some text, Left click where you want the text to go. Then while holding down the Ctrl key press the V key then release both keys. The copied text is now "pasted". (There is a reminder of the Ctrl+V shortcut key combination beside "Paste" on the edit pull down menu.) See Drag & Drop below for a 4th way to paste. That is it! Now you can Copy and Paste like anything.

Here is some space to practice cut & paste. Unlike Copy, to Cut you need an editable area like this, or an email, or a text document, or a word processing document. A slight variation is Cut & Paste. Cut Is like the Copy step above except that when you Cut, the remembered text is at the same time deleted from the document. So Cut & Paste is moving text from one place to another (Cutting out and removing the old text), where Copy & Paste is copying text from one place to another (Making a new copy). Like the Copy step, there are 3 ways to Cut. 1) The Edit pull down menu, 2) the right click pop up menu, and 3) the shortcut key combination which for Cut is Ctrl X. See Drag & Drop below for a 4th way to cut & paste.

Here is some space to practice drag & drop which is a quick way to copy & paste, or to cut & paste. To cut you need an editable area or document like this. Drag & Drop: This is really a way to cut & paste, or to copy & paste in one move. After selecting some text, move the mouse over the middle of the selected area. Now press and hold down the left mouse button. While still holding it down, drag the mouse over to the place where you want to paste the text. You will see a shadow of the text follow the mouse cursor. Now while still holding the mouse button, press and hold the Ctrl key on the keyboard. When you do that a small plus sign will appear beside the mouse cursor. The plus sign means it will add a new copy. Continue to hold the Ctrl key, and now release the mouse button. Then last release the Ctrl key. There it is copied and pasted. Drag & Drop will do a Cut & Paste as well. Try it just the same way, except don't press the Ctrl key. That way there is no plus sign, meaning no copy is made, just a cut & paste. But there is a chance when doing this, that it will leave the original text as it was, and do a copy & paste instead. That will happen if the original text is locked and can not be edited. Try Drag & Drop for a Cut & Paste of one or two words from inside the edit box to a new place in the edit box.

Here is some space to practice Undo. Of course to Undo you must have done some editing first. Undo: With all this high powered editing, it is easy to press the wrong key or click the wrong button, and when that happens, instead of just 1 letter in the wrong place you can have whole paragraphs, pages, or documents out of whack. That is where the Undo feature is really usefull There are 2 ways to use Undo. 1) The edit pull down menu, 2) the shortcut key combination Ctrl Z. If you accidentaly press Ctrl X (Cut) when you wanted Ctrl C (Copy), It will be alright, just press Ctrl Z (Undo) and you are fine. Suppose you Paste in an email, but instead of the information you selected and copied just 1 minute earlier that you wanted there, it pasted a phrase that you had moved a few seconds ago. No problem, just press Ctrl Z, to Undo it. Of course you will still have to go back to find that information and reselect & copy it, in order to paste it in the email. Undo works on different types of editing, like typing, as well as on cut, copy, & paste. But Undo can give you unfortunate surprises Undoing more typing than you wanted it to so be careful with Undo. Some programs have a Redo selection on the Edit pull down menu to recover what Undo may have ruined.

Here is some space to practice Redo. Of course to Redo you must use Undo first. Redo: Sometimes Undo can give you unfortunate surprises, it may Undo more typing than you wanted it to so be careful with it. Some programs have a Redo selection on the Edit pull down menu to recover what Undo may have ruined. If so you may be in luck. If not, you can still try the shortcut key combination for Redo, it is Ctrl Y. With this sentence: "The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog." Left click at the beginning of it. Then using shortcut keys Select (Shift with arrows) the sentence and Copy (Ctrl C) the sentence. Now Left click in the practice box at the right and Paste (Ctrl V) it there. The sentence should show in the practice box. Left click beside it to unhighlight the text. Good, now Undo (Ctrl Z) it. The paste is undone, the sentence is gone. OK, now Redo (Ctrl Y) it. The sentence is back. Practive some more with Undo and Redo. You can often use the other shortcut key combinations to, even if the menu items are not there in the program. Now you are an expert Copy & Paster. Have Fun.

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