Office Clipboard

[caption id="attachment_143" align="alignleft" width="152"]The Microsoft Office Clipboard The Microsoft Office Clipboard. Keyboard shortcut (Alt, H, F,O)[/caption]

How many times have you done it? You need to copy several things from one excel spreadsheet to another or from one word document to another or even from one Microsoft Office application to another, so you copy paste, copy paste…… copy paste. I think you get the point. Well let me introduce you to one of those tools that is now a little hidden however it’s a real little gem of a tool when you need to use it. It’s the office clipboard. No, not the normal windows clipboard.

The Microsoft Office Clipboard
The Microsoft Office Clipboard. Keyboard shortcut (Alt, H, F,O)

How many times have you done it? You need to copy several things from one excel spreadsheet to another or from one word document to another or even from one Microsoft Office application to another, so you copy paste, copy paste…… copy paste. I think you get the point. Well let me introduce you to one of those tools that is now a little hidden however it’s a real little gem of a tool when you need to use it. It’s the office clipboard. No, not the normal windows clipboard.

Ever since Microsoft changed it’s navigation system from the menu to the ribbon the Office Clipboard is tacked away under the Clipboard Group dialogue launcher. You can find it here.

The Microsoft Office Dialogue Launcher
The Microsoft Office Dialogue Launcher is located here.

The Office Clipboard tool allows you to store up to 24 items at any one time. I recently had to ask the bank for a list of credit card transactions over the last 12 months. They gave me this information in the form of a PDF. I was hoping to be able to copy and paste the transactions directly into Excel so that I could carry out a reconciliation with my business account. The copy and paste into Excel was not the difficult part.  What was annoying was the summary at the top of most pages that needed to be removed. Instead of removing the original information I decided to copy and paste the transactions to another sheet. That’s where the Office Clipboard came to the rescue. I copied just the transactions, one group at a time, to the Office Clipboard. There happened to be 16 different groups of transactions residing on the Office Clipboard once I had completed the process. That just left the pasting to be completed. One click of a button and it was done – Paste All

Office Clipboard Buttons
Office Clipboard Buttons

You can also paste or delete a single item by choosing the drop-down option next to it.

Microsoft Office Clipboard Drop-down Options
Microsoft Office Clipboard Drop-down Options

Thank god the Microsoft Office programmers and designers had thought this through.

In summary, it’s easy to forget that the Microsoft Office Clipboard is even there. Try and get into the habit of using it, even if you are just using it for a straight forward copy and paste. It can be god send when you do need to use it like I did recently.

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Author: Craig Holmes

Microsoft Office Master Instructor and owner of Raising the Bar. Formerly trained as an Aircraft Technician with the RAAF

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