Excel Copy And Paste

Paste Special

Normally when you perform an Excel copy and paste, all information from the copied cell(s) is pasted into the new cell(s). This includes any formulas or other cell contents, and the cell formatting.

However, sometimes you might want to only paste one part of the original copied cells, (e.g. just the cell values or just the cell formatting) into the new range. You can do this using the Excel 'Paste Special' command, which is found in the menu that appears when you right click the mouse.

The 'Paste Special' command can also be accessed from the 'Clipboard' group on the home tab of the Excel ribbon.

In recent versions of Excel (Excel 2010 or later), the right click menu and the 'Paste' menu contain 'Paste Special' shortcuts. Examples of these are shown below:

Paste Special Values Example

A simple paste special example is shown in the two images below.

The first image shows the set of cells A1-A15, which have coloured formatting and also contain data values. If you want to copy the values, but not the formatting of cells A1-A15, into cells B1-B15, you could do this as follows:

1. Select and copy cells A1-A15;
2. Select cell B1 (or cells B1-B15) and then select Paste Special (from the Excel ribbon or the mouse right-click menu);
3. You will be presented with the 'Paste Special' dialog box (also shown in the left image below). Select the option Values from this dialog box and click OK.

The image on the right below shows the result of the Paste Special. Note that the values from cells A1-A15 have been copied into cells B1-B15, but the formatting has not been copied across.

Original Spreadsheet with Paste Special Dialog Box

Paste Special Values Result

Of course, if you have one of the more recent version of Excel (Excel 2010 or later), you wouldn't need to open up the 'Paste Special' dialog box, as you can paste values only by using the Paste Special Values shortcut, .

Paste Special Transpose

You can see, from the above example, that the Values option is just one of several options linked to the Excel Paste Special feature.

As well as pasting selected attributes of the copied cells, the Paste Special command can be used to perform simple transformations. One example is the Transpose option which, in the example below, has been used to copy cells A1-A6, and paste these into the cell range C1-H1.

A B C 1 andy 2 dave 3 carl 4 beth 5 ian 6 pete Before Paste Special Transpose

A B C D E F G H 1 andy andy dave carl beth ian pete 2 dave 3 carl 4 beth 5 ian 6 pete Paste Special Transpose Result

Use Paste Special to Perform Arithmetic Operations

The Paste Special command can also be used to perform a simple arithmetic operation on the contents of the target cells. The values in the copied cells are added to, subtracted from, multiplied by or used to divide the target cells.

An example of this is shown below. Columns A and B of the example spreadsheet both contain numeric values and the Paste Special command is used to subtract the values in column A from the values in column B. This is done by copying column A, selecting column B, and then selecting 'Paste Special', with the Subtract option.

A B C 1 54 66 2 58 86 3 95 100 4 34 56 5 23 32 6 87 101 Before Paste Special Subtract

A B C 1 54 12 2 58 28 3 95 5 4 34 22 5 23 9 6 87 14 Paste Special Subtract Result

Note that, in the above example, instead of subtracting every cell of column A from column B, we could have subtracted a single cell of column A from every cell of column B. To do this, simply copy a single cell to start with, instead of a range of cells. Then, as in the example above, select column B and then select the Paste Special→Subtract option.

Copy Using Ctrl-D or Ctrl-R

Another convenient way to copy the values from one (or more) cells into adjacent cells is to use the Ctrl-D or Ctrl-R shortcuts.

Ctrl-D

The keyboard shortcut Ctrl + D (i.e. press the Ctrl key and, while keeping this pressed down, press the D key), copies the contents of a cell or row into the cell(s) below.

There are two ways in which this shortcut works:

1. If you select one or more cells in a single row, the shortcut Ctrl-D copies the row above the selected row, into the selected row.

   
   pressing Ctrl-D copies the contents of cells A1-C1 into cells A2-C2

2. If you select cells in more than one row, the shortcut Ctrl-D copies the top row of the selected range into all the other rows in the selected range.

   
   pressing Ctrl-D copies the contents of cells A1-C1 into cells A2-C4

Ctrl-R

The keyboard shortcut Ctrl + R (i.e. press the Ctrl key and, while keeping this pressed down, press the R key), copies the contents of a cell or row into the cell(s) to the right.

Again, there are two ways in which this shortcut works:

1. If you select one or more cells in a single column, the shortcut Ctrl-R copies the cells to the left of the selected column, into the selected column.

   
   pressing Ctrl-R copies the contents of cells A1-A3 into cells B1-B3.

2. If you select cells in more than one column, the shortcut Ctrl-R copies the left column of the selected range, into all the other columns in the selected range.

   
   pressing Ctrl-R copies the contents of cells A1-A3 into cells B1-D3