Cut, Copy, Paste Click to see a larger image

I'm sure that you are familiar with using Cut, Copy and Paste in a word processing document. But did you know that you can use Copy and Paste to move information between applications?

First off, lets make sure you know how to use Cut, Copy, and Paste. First, you select the text or item you want to Cut or Copy. Then you select Cut or Copy from the Menu Bar. Your data is moved to the Clipboard where is is stored until you replace it with another Cut or Copy. When you Paste, the data on the Clipboard is inserted at the current insertion point.

To move data from one application to another:

1. Copy your item to the Clipboard.
2. Move to the other application by either clicking the application on the Dock or by using Command-Tab.
3. Choose Paste from the Menu Bar to insert your item.

Click here to see the Video Demo

More than just text can be Copied and Pasted. Nearly anything you can select can be copied to the Clipboard– text, images, parts of web pages. You can Paste text anywhere you have an insertion point (the flashing vertical bar.) Pasting images is a bit less predictable. You can't Paste an image into a text field, but you can usually paste them into a word processing documents. You can tell if you can Cut, Copy or Paste an item by looking at the Edit menu on the Menu Bar. If a function is not available, the item is greyed out.

Of course there are keyboard shortcuts for Cut, Copy and Paste. I'm not a big fan of keyboard shorcuts, but these keyboard shortcuts are used so often that you really should learn them:

• Command -X is for Cut
• Command -C is for Copy
• Command -V is for Paste

Related Items: Copy | Clipboard