Power Tip: All About the Three Clipboards

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Music Intro

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CUT.

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Copy and Paste.

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Tools we use all the time. They should be simple enough, but since you use them every day, all day long. Do you really understand the complexities and the shortcuts under the hood of PowerPoint? There’s a lot more going on, including pay special options, destination format choices, plus linking and embedding, let alone knowing about all three clipboards, YES! Three clipboards, including the special PowerPoint office clipboard and the built-in and little-known windows 10 and soon 11 clipboards, which offer differently. Hi, this is Les from Power Up Training where I provide my decades of experience to you for free, including which of the three clipboards is my favorite, which I’m going to share with you at the end of this tutorial, copy cut and paste is pretty generic across windows and programs, but there’s some quirks and some pro tips for PowerPoint. And specifically for the windows version, whether you’re just getting started or a long time PowerPoint professional, there should be some great tips along the way to look at the list of chapters here, where I’ve added the videos time marks, so that you can jump to the topic of interest.

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And if on watching this on YouTube, hover your mouse along the bottom play bar, to see the chapter headings, just to get the fundamentals down, copy we’ll take whatever is highlighted texts or images or whatever, and make a duplicate copy onto the digital clipboard, which you can’t see. But the object is captured with the copy command. The cut is similar in that it will duplicate the selected objects onto the clipboard, but also delete the object from off PowerPoint. This will be valuable if you want to move an object, just cut to remove it. And then with the next command of paste, you can locate the item onto the new location on the slide or the presentation, or even a different program, such as word. So yes, paste will put the most recent item off the clipboard onto your canvas. So how to make this happen?

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You’ve got three ways. The action icons that you’ll find on the home ribbon menu, or secondly, do a right mouse button click on the item that you want to copy or cut or three, use one of the three keyboard shortcut commands For copy, do control C for cut control X and the pace use the control key. Plus the letter V.

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Let’s go do this.

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With my cool dog selected. I’m going to go up to the PowerPoint home ribbon menu and find the copy action command icon one click, and it looks like nothing happened, but it did. The cool dog image was clipped onto the invisible PowerPoint clipboard. And to prove it, let me then click the pace to action icon and see the second dog image up here. That was a copy. And then a paste. Now let’s watch the clicking of the cut action icon and see the top dog image disappear.

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But unlike delete, cuts stores that image into the clipboard for future use and a click of the pace we’ll drop the dog back in. So that’s how the mechanics of working with the action icon menus, but we can also use the right mouse click on any object and find the same commands of cut, copy and paste, and do the exact same items this time, working with our kitty. Lastly, the third method, which is my favorite because it’s the fastest. When my hands are on the keyboard or the keyboard shortcuts of control C control X and control V the pneumonics for memorizing. This is easy for copy with the letter C, but for cut. Think of the X as a giant red X on a printout to delete something. And for the letter V for insert, imagine a term paper correction where you use the carrot V mark to indicate insert this word here.

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And the selection of items on PowerPoint can make a difference. Watch as I select the purple text of line one and copy it is subtle, but I selected not just the text, but PowerPoint also selected the end paragraph mark. So what I do at pace, I drop in the two words, plus a carriage return for a new line. To reset, I’m going to delete that second line one and let’s do it again. Now watch as I select just the text without the extra invisible character churn in the line. Now, when I do a pace, the words just show up with no carriage, hard return separately. You can copy not just the selected text, but full objects, including the text placeholder object. So click on the outside border. I do a quick copy and paste to get a complete duplicate of all the textiinside the placeholder copying individual objects that are not texts.

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Here’s obviously the same, but you can also use your mouse to select multiple objects and copy them as a group and paste them in. As the group. Need more help on object selection? Go to our PowerPoint mouse tutorial listed above and objects that can be copied or cut does include full slide pages. Just copy the thumbnail on the left side of your screen, or work in the slide sorter mode to copy and then paste into a new location. And to be clear once copied to the main PowerPoint clipboard, the object stays there to be used over and over and over again. It will only disappear once. The next item is copied and replaces that number one, holding spot on the clipboard, but a faster technique is duplicate. Instead of copy and paste, you can select an object on the slide and hold down the control key.

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Plus the letter D for duplicate and save yourself one step note that this will not work on just highlighted text, but it will duplicate full text placeholders. Now moving to the advanced topic of altering the format of the pasted data. This becomes important when the source object comes from a different location or a program, and you need to transform the pasted results into a different format watches. I switch to a separate PowerPoint presentation that is formatted with a different design pay attention to the white text color with some red and a different font. I’m going to copy that. And then we’ll explore our various paste format choices in the text box placeholder. I will use the right mouse button click to pop up the four pasted format choices. The cool feature in the latest PowerPoint is the software previews. The look as I have for my mouse over the choice.

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So the first of the four available options is use destination theme, which means match the pasted data to follow what is around it on the existing slide. So the font, the color matches, but it does let the red highlighting come through. Choice. Number two is keep source formatting, which means it will bring over the original white color and different font and still use the red highlighted word from the other presentation design look choice. Number three is kind of weird for text. It is paste as a picture, which in this case, it is a picture, but typically this is more useful when coming from a non-office program and you want to just display it as an image. The last choice number four is keep text only, which is as if you typed it in by hand note that this is different from choice. One of used destination theme as the red color word does not show up.

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It’s just as if we had typed it in from our keyboard, that destination format choices become more interesting when we’re copying a full slide from another presentation. And we now have choices that have big impacts. There are times when we want to copy the slide to seamlessly fit in with our destination presentation format to make everything match. But in this case, that match destination looks a mess. However, if I choose keep source formatting, then this slide will look identical to where it came from, but it no longer looks stylistically as if it matches our existing presentation design layouts. So you need to make your choices. So the third choice is to drop the source light in as an image, but it will no longer be a standalone slide, but a picture on an existing page. And it is no longer editable as a PowerPoint slide.

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Take note that the pace options are aware of what is currently on the clipboard here. I’ve copied my cool dog image. And so I only have two choices for pasting and none of them have to do with text. The ability to select the paste format may become more useful if you could choose it after pasting. And this can be turned on by showing paste option button, which will appear after you do the pasting to turn this on, you need to go to the file room menu, and then under the PowerPoint options and advanced, you’re going to be able to find the ability to turn this on or off. And once you’ve said it, it will apply all the way through both word and Excel. Now watch after I paste the cool dog, the little dropdown box icon appears, and I can then alter the paste format after completing the paste, but only immediately after the paste action is issued over the years, windows and PowerPoint has become more forgiving in pasting foreign format graphics, but there are times when you need a special format paste based on the object type.

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It may be just selecting a better formatted image type such as the vector image or a JPEG. But if you work with other compliant tools such as Microsoft Vizio, you can copy a non PowerPoint format object and bring it over as an embedded object. A simple pace will drop the object onto the slide, but if you use the paste drop down arrow and select paste special, then you can, you can do an extra special pace of the object. In this case, a Vizio object. This is like saying the file, not on your hard drive, but inside your PowerPoint while you can move and resize it like any image, it is special. Double-click the image. And you’re now editing the file in the native program. Yes, you’d need the native program on your PC. In this case, Vizio is installed on my local computer note, how the menu color and ribbon commands changed the Vizio command structure.

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And then after exiting by clicking outside, it will save the file back again, inside a PowerPoint, as an embedded object pacing, an embedded object is quite different from using paste link embedded objects store the file inside of PowerPoint. But a paste link is pulling in an object from an external program or a presentation as a semi live duplicate from the source. Now watch how I bring a single slide from another presentation. I’m going to copy this slide and then return back to my core presentation there. I’m going to do a pace clicking on the dropdown menu for paste special, and then click the paste link what’s happened is that now we have a direct link to that slide. In the other presentation, the object can be moved around on the slide and even resized, but what does the link mean? Well, let’s go back to the other presentation and we’re going to change the text from cupcake to pies and ice cream.

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And then returning back to the target presentation, the site has not yet changed, but the link is just waiting to be updated. If I right click on the linked objectand select, not linked slide object, but update link PowerPoint will go out, find the source data and then update the object. It’s pretty cool. I forced the update here, but it’s important to know that every time you reopen the presentation that holds the linked object PowerPoint, it will attempt to go out and find the source file to update the program and up pops this message. So my point is that PowerPoint will attempt to keep the file up to date with the latest data. However, I have a huge warning. The original file must be visible and accessible from the same location oriented a pop-up message like this error that the source file can’t be found, and you may need to relink the object.

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This is embarrassing. If you’re making a presentation in front of a crowd on a different computer, there’s always a risk. So always test in advance. This is a very powerful tool. If you’re considering, dealing with dynamic data, but not only from PowerPoint, but from items such as Excel we’re updating numbers or charts on a regular basis is slick to have it done automatically having this semi live when updated data can be incredible, but be careful. And you’ve been warned here.

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Now onto the last big topic: the three different clipboards. Yes. Three clipboards. The first clipboard is what we’ve been using. The whole presentation, basically holding the last item copied or cut. Copy, or cut a new item? And it replaces what is on the clipboard, but starting in office 2007, Microsoft added a second clipboard called office clipboard. And once opened, it starts to store all of your recent copied items, almost all, basically around 24, maybe 25, depending on your version, unless you also hit a total memory size limit, which has increased over the years, open up once you start office.

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So it can start collecting the multiple items onto the clipboards from the very beginning of your work session. And then the paste, just click the item to paste. You could use a drop down arrow, but you can also just click it. Note that there is no pace format choices from inside the office, clipboard, chest the paste. However, if you use our earlier trick to turn on show paste options, after pasting, you will then see the little drop down arrow and you can make your selection after the paste. One more key point once started the office, clipboard will also copy items outside of the Microsoft office universe. Here. I have a non-standard notepad tool. And from here, I can go ahead and copy texting copy text, and you see that it will drop into the office clipboard. Overall, this is a totally cool tool to bring in multiple previous copies of items, and then just go paste paste, paste paste paste.

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But there is a third clipboard.

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The windows 10 clipboard. This is very similar to the office clipboard with some pros and some cons. The pros is that it too will collect multiple items into a long holding clipboard memory storage. And it will get started immediately after you get your computer fired up, and this is great to access it. You hold down your keyboard windows star key. Plus the letter V and up pops the clipboard there. You can scroll down the list. I’ve previously copied items and click on them to pop them into your slide. But here’s the catch. Many of these previously collected items may lose their original source formatting and be dropped in just as an image or text. See how our bird has a white background. It’s no longer a PowerPoint native object, and you lose the ability to choose a paste format. Basically the downside of the windows clipboard is that the copy data gets dumbed down and loses some source formatting information as a small consolation prize.

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Windows 10 and soon, Windows 11 does give you some bonus options to find these, you need to open up the windows clipboard setting, go to your Windows’ search bar and type in Clipboard settings. And there you can turn on Flipboard history, but more interestingly is the ability to sync the clipboard to other windows computers that you might be using. Give you access to the same shared clipboard when you’re using your other computers. This is slick, but for me, the loss of the source data format makes my favorite clipboard tool, not windows clipboard, but the office clipboard, unless I need the special capabilities, of pasting an embedded object or creating a live data link. And then I go back to the core clipboard. We’ve all been using for years.

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You are now a clipboard black belt master. If this was useful, then like it and share it with your friends and coworkers. This clipboard tutorial topic came to be because Sachin BS asked for it in a previous YouTube tutorial comment on one of my training videos, make your own request for a tutorial in the comments below.

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Do subscribe to help, encourage me to make more free tutorials for you, such as my editing shortcuts in PowerPoint. Lastly, if you want to learn everything about PowerPoint, then visit us at Power-up.Training.

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Until next time go power up.

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[Music].