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Paste Special

You can copy and paste the contents of the clipboard to the spreadsheet cells using a number of rules to specify which cells the data is pasted in to.

  1. After copying your data to the clipboard, from the menu select Edit | Paste Special.

  2. Select options as required then click OK.
Options

Skip empty items in clipboard Skip over any empty/blank/missing items in the clipboard, and do not paste these to cells. The cell position in the spreadsheet is not advanced, so that the next non-missing item in the clipboard is written to the current cell.
Transpose clipboard items Read the clipboard items column by column, rather than the default row by row order.
Overwrite cells with missing values An empty item on the clipboard will be pasted to a cell, creating a missing value in that cell. If this option is not selected the cell will not be changed.
Only fill missing cells in spreadsheet The clipboard item is only written to the spreadsheet when the spreadsheet cell contains a missing value.
Only advance clipboard on writing cell The current item on the clipboard is kept for the next insertion until the combinations of the other options allow it to be written. For example, if Only fill missing cells in spreadsheet is set, and this option is also set, the clipboard contents will be used one by one to fill the missing cells. If this option was not set, then the clipboard item would be skipped, unless it coincided with a missing cell.
Fill cells These options control the order that the cells in the spreadsheet are filled.

  • Default – the cells in the spreadsheet will be traversed row by row. When the end of a line is reached in the clipboard, the paste cell will be moved to a new row in the spreadsheet. If the selected cells in the spreadsheet have not been filled, the current line is recycled until they are filled. If the clipboard contains more columns than the spreadsheet this data is pasted in the rows beneath the first filled set of rows.
  • Column by column – the cells in the spreadsheet will be traversed column by column, starting from the current cell. The layout of items in the clipboard will be ignored.
  • Row by row – the cells in the spreadsheet will be traversed row by row, starting from the current cell. The layout of items in the clipboard will be ignored, so that a new line in the clipboard will not cause the paste to move onto the next row in the spreadsheet.
Stop at the end of the first column/row Only fill the first column in column by column mode (or row in row by row mode), and then stop.
Go to the top of next column/row If multiple columns/rows are being filled (the above item is not selected), then selecting this option will cause the paste operation to go to the top of the next column on reaching the end of the current column. If this option is not selected, the paste operation will go to the cell in the next column which is in the same row as the starting cell.
Case of text These options control whether the case of any text being pasted to the cells is modified.

  • Unchanged – text is entered into the cell exactly as it is in the clipboard.
  • Lower – text is converted to lower case.
  • Upper – text is converted to upper case

Updated on March 4, 2019

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