Cut and Paste
by Stephen J. Shastay
Let me give you two explanations. The first one will be short. It will give you an overview, and it will explain the dangers of cutting and pasting. The second will be longer. It will give you the actual steps that you must take to cut and paste.
1) Overview of cutting and pasting
Cutting and pasting is a two-step operation. The first step is where the danger is: cutting. It is actually several combined steps. Basically, you are telling the computer to remember the part you are cutting (it does this by putting it on the clipboard), and then delete the part you are cutting. Now you have a new document, minus the cut part. The cut part is on the clipboard, which is part of the computer's temporary memory. The clipboard only remembers the last thing that you put in it. This means you must now paste this cut part into another document or you will lose it.
The pasting part is simple. You can paste into virtually any document. You can't do weirdo things like paste text into places where a picture should go, but why would you want to anyway?
For novices, it is better to not cut at all. Instead, copy the selected part. It will still go to the clipboard. It will still be pasted in the same way. But it is a much safer method. It doesn't remove the information from the original document. You can always cut that part out later when you are 100% positive that you want to cut it out.
* Once you cut something, immediately go to the new document and paste it. Don't do anything else. There is a danger that you may cut something else (the clipboard only remembers the last thing you cut) or you may forget to paste (When you turn off the computer, the clipboard is erased).
* Cut first, then paste, then save your new document, then save the original document. Once your documents are saved, they are safe from everything up to a complete computer failure.
* After you change a document, you must save the document. This is your final chance to keep the changes you made or restore the document to its original condition. This is your final safety net. If you save it, the changes are permanent. If you don't save it, the document will be in its original condition the next time you open it.
* A better way to cut and paste is to
copy and paste and then cut.
2. The steps to cut and paste.
You can cut and paste from virtually any document you find. You can use any file on your computer or you can use web pages like this one. The first step is to find information that you want. Let's pretend that you want to cut and paste this paragraph. This paragraph will be our example.
Before you can cut or copy that paragraph, you must tell the computer what part you have selected. To do that, you must highlight your selected text. This is easy, but it may seem tricky at first. Even experts sometimes have trouble highlighting the exact part. Follow these instructions right now for practice.
Put your mouse on the first letter of the first word that you want to highlight. The first paragraph starts with "You can cut..."; therefore, the first letter is "Y."
Left click on that letter and don't release the left click. Keep the button pressed. Now, move your mouse to the right. As your mouse moves, it will highlight all of the text from the first letter onward.
1. If you left click and move your mouse to the right, it will highlight to the right.
2. If you left click and move your mouse downward, it will highlight all of the lines that you cover. Remember to hold the button down while you do this.
3. If you think different from most people, you can even highlight from the end of a section to the beginning of a section. The computer doesn't care. All the computer knows is that it is going to highlight everything between where you start to highlight and wherever you move the mouse.
4. If you highlight too much, you can adjust it as long as you still are holding the left button down.
5. Release the left click when you are satisfied with how much is highlighted.
6. Once you release the button, you can't adjust the amount you have highlighted.
7. You can remove the highlighting and start over by left clicking anywhere on your document.
8. If you have highlighted the wrong section or the wrong amount, just repeat the above steps.
Warning. Warning. Warning. Once you highlight a section, the computer knows that you want to do something with it. If you type anything at all when you have a section highlighted, then the computer will replace the highlighted section with the stuff that you are typing. Therefore, once you highlight something, make sure that the very next thing you do is the copying or cutting. If you do make a mistake (Don't worry, you will. Everybody does.), you can undo it in two ways.
* Click the Edit button at the top of the document. The first selection will often let you undo the last thing you did. In fact, it will often let you undo more than a few things that you did wrong. Press it once, and it undoes one step. Press it again, and it will undo the step before that, etc., etc., etc.,
* The other way to undo a mistake is to close the document and not save it. When you open a document to edit it, you are actually opening a copy of that document. The original is still in the folder where you found it. You are editing a copy. When you close a document, the computer asks you if you want to save it. If you have made a mistake and you can't figure out how to correct it, don't save the document. Tell it no. After the document closes, you can reopen it and you will have your original document.
9. Our task is to highlight the entire first paragraph. By now, starting in the right spot shouldn't be too hard, but it can be a little tricky highlighting only the words you need. It's simple. After you left click on the first letter that you wish to highlight, drag your mouse to the last letter that you wish to highlight. If it covers too much or too little, your mouse is probably a little high or low on the line that you want.
10. Once the proper text is highlighted, right click on the highlighted section. Now press Copy or Cut. Please read the Overview of Cutting and Pasting at the beginning of this article. It will explain the differences between copying and cutting.
11. Once you have cut, go immediately to the place where you want to paste the info. Take your mouse and left click on the spot where you want to appear. Now right click and select Paste. The text will appear.
12. A cool function of pasting is that you can paste the same information over and over and over. Sometimes you will want to do that. You only have to cut or copy once, but you can paste forever.
13. Once you paste, save your document. If it is a new document, you must name it. If it is a document that you already have on your computer, then it won't ask you for a name. It will expect you to use the name that it already has.
14. There may be times when you want to paste something into a document, but you still want a copy of the original document without the pasted part. This is easy. Open the document and paste the text into it. Instead of saving your document, you need to click File at the top of the document and then click Save As. Now you need to give this document a new name because you are creating an entirely new document. Once you give it the name, you will have your old document in its original condition, plus you will have a new document with a new name.
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