paste

Whenever you move data from Microsoft Excel to its Office mate Word, it seems there's always a compromise involved: If the formatting makes the transition intact, then changing the data either causes problems or simply can't be done. If you can alter the data, either the formatting is a mess, or the resulting Word document is huge. Here are the advantages and disadvantages of the various ways to add Excel data to a Word document, starting with the simplest.

Copy the cells and paste them as a Word table: If your Excel worksheet is formatted simply, and you … Read more

It's not often that Crave is exposed to a mobile phone so stunningly ugly that it leaves us speechless. And this isn't one of them. But it comes close, which is saying a lot.

The "Serendipity" collection from Givori looks like something one might find at a grade-school crafts fair, not a purveyor of luxury goods selling it for $3,100. They're basically Nokia 8800 and N76 handsets encrusted with "vintage 1930s and 1940s intaglio Czech stones sprinkled with tiny specks of aventurine gold," according to Luxurylaunches, by "a renowned international jewelry … Read more

Anytime I need to do research on the Web, I know that the fingers involved with the copy and paste keyboard shortcuts are in for a workout. I also know I'll be alt-tabbing to switch between my browser and my text editor, too. Fortunately I found clipboard utilities to make any cut and paste or data-entry task a lot easier.

Clipboard utilities make it possible to copy numerous, separate items from your Web browser without switching programs. Once safely copied, you can then move to your document or text editor and paste each bit of info right where you … Read more

Last week I described the PureText utility that lets you paste plain text in Word and other applications via a keyboard shortcut. You can create a macro to get the same functionality in Word and Excel, without having to download anything.

(Note that the original post of this tip reported that PureText required that you click its icon in your system tray before you press the shortcut keys to paste plain text. This is true only if you open the destination app after the material you want to paste has been added to the clipboard. If both the source and … Read more

"If you want something done right, do it yourself."

"Why reinvent the wheel?"

That sums up a conversation I had with a coworker after I told him about the macro I created in Microsoft Word that converts my Ctrl-V keyboard shortcut into one that pastes text from a Web site, some other app, or elsewhere, minus the formatting, images, and any other nontext stuff. The fact is, I rarely want to paste anything but the text, and I want it in the format of the file it's being added to, not the format of the … Read more

When you need to paste text--and just plain text--without any fonts, pictures, or style markers, what do you do? Microsoft Word users might employ the Paste Special feature in the Edit menu. And if you're not using Word? Then you might copy the source text and paste it into Notepad, TextPad, or another top-rated text editor. Then you would copy that unformatted text and paste it to the destination document.

What bother. PureText is a scrappy clipboard app that cuts out the busy work. It assigns a hot key combination to facilitate format-free pasting from the source to the destination without you ever needing to launch an additional app or detour to Word's Edit menu. Holding down the Windows key while pressing "V" is the default setup, but users can choose from a number of other hot key options. Note though, the ALT key isn't one of them.… Read more

Clippings is a superhandy Firefox browser extension that allows you to easily paste text from a list of saved clipboards. It may sound boring, but using Clippings for Web forms and multiple e-mail signatures lets you complete those tasks more quickly, saving your keystrokes for something more important, such as actual communication.

Clippings installs as a contextual menu. Right-clicking an empty form or writing area lets you select a saved snippet from your clipboard. It took me only a minute or two to set up a fairly extensive list of commonly used entries.

The big question: How is Clippings better … Read more