What is Cutting & Pasting ? You hear people talking about "cut and paste", but what is it, what does it mean? If you remember the way you used to make up a scrap book when you were kids - you cut things out from all sorts of places and pasted them into your scrap book.   On the computer it is pretty much the same.   The way it works is like this.   You copy from one area on your computer using the "Copy" command which places that item into a special area called the "Clipboard" - it is kept there ready for later use.   If you open another document or application you can then "Paste" from the "Clipboard" into the other document or application. Let's look at an example.

In the example on the left the cursor has been placed on the text just ahead of the (8) and while holding the left mouse button down the cursor was dragged down to the end of GO TO (9). The effect of this is to "Select" that area of text.

You then "Copy" this text to the clipboard by any one of these methods; (1)   Use the top menu bar to select "Edit", "Copy", or (2)   Right-click on the selected area of text and choose "Copy" from the list of options, or (3)   Hold down the [Ctrl] key and press [C] The selected text should now be safely in the "Clipboard". "Pasting" the text into another document or application. Move to your other application which for example could be an e-mail. Place your cursor in the area where you want the text to appear and use one of these methods to "Paste" the text into the e-mail. (1)   Use the top menu bar to select "Edit", "Paste", or (2)   Right-click on the selected area of text and choose "Paste" from the list of options, or (3)   Hold down the [Ctrl] key and press [V] The selected text should now appear. NOTE: The "Clipboard" holds only one thing at a time, so the next time you "Copy" something the first item will be replaced. (Some later versions of Windows® allow multiple clipboard items). "Cutting" & "Pasting" is exactly the same apart from the fact that "Cutting" removes the item whereas "Copying" leaves the original intact. - Hold [Ctrl] key and press [X] for "Cut". You can of course use this method for all sorts of things including pictures. In Windows Explorer for instance you can copy things from one place to another. See also COPYING files using My Computer. COPYING files using Windows Explorer.