Unit four

Drafting

Unit contents

Cut and paste

Cut and Paste is one of the most powerful tools available to you in Microsoft Word. It allows you reorganise your ideas and your writing by moving phrases, sentences or paragraphs from one part of your essay to another.

This page shows you the basics of Cut and Paste. It shows you how to select text, how to cut, copy and paste it into another part of your essay. It also explains how to use the spike to cut and paste several pieces of unconnected text into one place.

You can cut and paste text within a single Microsoft Word document or from one document to another. You can cut and paste graphics and tables as well as text. And you can cut and paste text, graphics and tables from one programme to another. For example you can cut and paste the text on this page (viewed in Microsoft Internet Explorer) to a Microsoft Word document, if you wish.

Selecting text

In order to move text you must first select it. There are many methods to do this in Microsoft Word. The simplest is to place the mouse pointer at the beginning of the text you want to copy, then hold down the left mouse button and drag it through the text up to the point where you wish to stop selecting. The text you have selected will be highlighted (displayed as white on black).

Here are some short cuts to selecting text in Microsoft Word:

• To select one word at a time, place the cursor anywhere on the chosen word and double click the left mouse button.
• To select longer sections, and avoid chopping any words in half, follow the previous procedure, but hold down the mouse button on the second click. Now when you drag through the text, it will select whole words one at a time.
• To select one line of text at a time, place the cursor at the beginning of the line, then press and hold down the shift key. While holding it down press one of the arrow keys on the numeric keypad. Pressing the down arrow selects line(s) of text downwards, while pressing the up arrow key selects upwards.
• To select a whole paragraph, double-click in the white space on the left of the paragraph you want to select.

Cutting, copying and pasting

When you Cut selected text you remove it from the place where it is and place it in the Windows 95 Clipboard. When you Copy selected text, you leave it in the place where it is and place a copy of it in the Clipboard. When you Paste something that you have cut or copied, you place it in another part of your document.

Note that any text that you place in the Clipboard is removed from it as soon as you Cut or Copy another piece of text. You should always Paste text immediately after you have Cut or Copied it. Because there is a risk of losing text when cutting and pasting, we also recommend that you make a backup copy of your file before you start.

Cut and paste using menus: There are various ways to Cut and Paste text. The slowest is to use the mouse to choose the commands from the drop down edit menu as illustrated here:

After selecting text, this method requires four mouse clicks:

• Click Edit
• Click on Cut or Copy
• After moving the cursor to the point where you want to place the text (either the same document or another), click Edit again.
• Click Paste

Shortcuts:

There are two shortcuts for Cut, Copy and Paste:

• Use the Cut, Copy and Paste icons in the Microsoft Word toolbar.

Cut

Copy

Paste

• Use keyboard shortcuts. Hold down the Ctrl key and press the appropriate letter: Ctrl + X for Cut, Ctrl + C for Copy, Ctrl + V for Paste.

The Spike

The Spike is basically a super-clipboard. It allows you to Cut several pieces of text from different parts of a document or different documents and then Paste all of them into the new location at once. The real beauty of this is that it also pastes the text in the order that you cut it. So if you want to reorganise your paragraph order, say, to improve the cohesion of your essay, you can do this in a few minutes. Just work out beforehand what new ordering you want and copy the text in that order.

Because the Spike cuts text, make a copy of your document as a back-up in case you cut something by accident and/or can't remember what you wanted to move, or where you wanted to move it.

Here's how it works:

• Select a piece of text that you want to move using one of the above methods and then hold down the Ctrl key and press F3. This removes the text from its original position and copies it into the Spike.
• Then move to the next part you want to copy and repeat the process.
• Continue using Ctrl + F3 until you've copied all the text you want.
• Now go to the location where you want to place the text that you have copied to the Spike and hold down the Ctrl and Shift keys at the same time and press F3. This will Paste all the text in the Spike (in the same order as it was copied) to the new location.