Microsoft® Word 2007 Bible

Chapter 10. The Clipboard

IN THIS CHAPTER

• Using the Office 2007 Clipboard

• Windows Clipboard versus the Office Clipboard

• The Clipboard task pane

• Managing Clipboard items

• Paste Special

• Alternatives to the Clipboard

The Microsoft Office Clipboard has grown and expanded well beyond its original single-item facility. For those of us who began computing life in the days before GUI and Windows, this single innovation revolutionized the way we used computers. It has no doubt saved millions of pieces of scrap paper.

The Clipboard is a temporary storage area you can use to transfer text, files, pictures, and other objects between different programs or different parts of a single program. You copy or cut text from one location, and then paste it in the destination location.

Windows itself has a Clipboard that you can use in just about any Windows program. Like the Office 2007 Clipboard, Windows' Clipboard can be used to transfer files, pictures, sounds, text, and so on. Unlike the Office version, however, the Windows Clipboard stores only a single item at a time.

The Office 2007 Clipboard can store up to 24 items (as could that of Office XP and 2003). Each time you add something new, it goes on top of the list. When the Clipboard reaches 24 items, adding another item causes the last item to disappear.

When you use the ordinary Paste command (Ctrl+V or clicking Paste in the Home ribbon), you access the first item, which is at the top of the list. You also get the top item when you use Paste in a non-Office ...