We are not sure who in the Computer Science world first came up with the idea of Copy/Paste, but all developers of computer documents of any type owe a debt of gratitude. Excel developers probably should move to the head of the line of the "thank you" givers!
The obvious use of the copy/paste process should not go slighted. The instances when you carefully format a cell and wish to have the exact information with the exact cell format in another cell comes up quite frequently. Rather than re-type the cell contents and re-format the second cell, you execute a copy/paste routine and the labor is reduced to a few keyboard maneuvors (Control + C and Control + V) or choosing Edit + Copy and Edit + Paste from the Menu. You may prefer to use the Copy and Paste buttons on the Menu. We think they gave you so many different ways to Copy/Paste because you find so many opportunities to make your work more efficient!
Copy & Paste Buttons
In Excel, there are other, more subtle benefits of the Copy/Paste process. These show up in cells containing formulas or functions. Consider this example.
The ABC company is developing a spreadsheet to show it's earnings by Quarters for the year 1999 and the percentages of the annual earnings for each quarter. The pattern of Year 1999 should be repeated for Year 2000.
We note the quarter headings could be typed and formatted, but we prefer to use the copy/paste process. We select the cells we wish to copy and paste in the location we want the titles copied.
We note the row of headings for Year 1999 begins one cell to the right of 1999 and one cell down. We select to paste the headings in the same location relative to the Year 2000 cell.
Let's enter the earnings for Year 2000.
There are several ways to make Excel compute the Total earnings for Year 2000. We are going to use the Copy/Paste method.
But Wait!!!! The formula or function in Cell G3 is adding the quarterly earnings for Year 1999!!! If you copy Cell G3 to Cell G8, this would give the wrong answer!!!
Take heart. Cell G3 looks like this:
=SUM(C3:F3) and NOT =350,000 + 355,000 + 410,000 + 380,000
The magic of Excel's Copy/paste with formulas will copy the function RELATIVE to its new location. That is, when we paste in cell G8, the function will be
=SUM(C8:F8)
just as if we typed it ourselves! And the results are just fine.
Now we need the percentages of the annual earnings for Year 2000. The long and tedious way would be to divide the quarterly earnings by the annual total for each quarter. Then we would have to format each cell as a percent with one decimal place to be consistent with Year 1999. Thank you for copy/paste!
Let's take a look at the formulas and functions so far. In particular we are interested in the formulas for Year 1999.
We will describe the formula in Cell F4 in a "funny" way.
Divide the value in the cell above this one by the value in the cell to its immediate right.
This is what is meant by refering to a cell by its "relative" position. If we copy the cell in F4 and paste it in cell F9 using a "relative copy", then Cell F9 should contain the results of dividing the value in the cell above this one by the value in the cell to its immediate right! Guess what....Excel's default copy/paste function with cells containing formulas and functions is the Relative Copy.
In an attempt to be most efficent, we will copy ALL of the percentage cells at one time. And each will be a relative copy/paste. Note that Percentage also needs to be copied, so let's get all of the data we need at once.
By selecting from Percent through 25.4%, we correctly identify all of the information that needs to be pasted beginning at the proper cell under Year 2000!
When the Paste command is given, you have the correct calculations AND the correct cell formats...at least you have the same format as the cells in Row 4!
We will discuss in a different tutorial a copy/paste that is NOT the relative copy/paste. You should learn both and then choose the correct one to use to save you time and also produce accurate results.