Using the Office Clipboard
In Office 2000, Microsoft tried to improve the standard Windows Clipboard by augmenting it with an enhanced toolbar called the Office Clipboard. Unfortunately, the Office 2000 Clip board toolbar was plagued with bugs and an annoying, half-baked interface that made it nearly useless. In Office XP, this feature is improved, although still not perfect. If you detested the Office Clip board in its previous incarnation, we recommend trying it again in Office XP; you might find it more useful and manageable this time around. If not, we'll show you how to make it go away.
How Office Extends the Windows Clipboard
Using the Office Clipboard, you can gather as many as 24 Office objects (that's twice as many as the Office 2000 Clipboard allowed) and then paste them—one at a time or all at once—into an Office document. The enhanced Clipboard can hold any data type that will fit in the Windows Clipboard, including text from a Word document; a dataset from an Access database; graphics (even the animated variety) for use in PowerPoint presentations or forms built in Word, Excel, or Access; and Excel charts or ranges.
Using the Office Clipboard, you can tackle any of the following tasks:
Pull together excerpts from a large report to create an executive summary, talking points, or a press release.
Gather background information from scattered files and assemble the appropriate parts into the first draft of a memo or report.
Take a collection of briefing memos, one from each member of your committee, and stitch them together into a single report.
Quickly collect a list of names or figures you expect to use repeatedly in a document.
The enhanced Clipboard is available in any Office application. It appears automatically (see Figure 6.1), if you copy or cut two Office items in sequence without an intervening paste—by pressing Ctrl+C twice in a row, for instance. To display the Office Clipboard pane manually, choose Edit, Office Clipboard.
Figure 6.1. Use the Office Clip board to copy up to 24 items, and then paste them, one at a time or all at once, into any Office document.
→ To learn more about working with the task pane, see "Configuring Common Office Features".
Each item on the Office Clipboard is represented by an icon that depicts the application from which the item was copied. The Clipboard pane also displays a thumbnail view of the copied item, whether it consists of text, numbers, or a graphic.
When you start an Office application, the first entry on the Clipboard toolbar consists of the current contents of the Windows Clipboard. After an Office application is active, any item you cut or copy to the Clipboard (even from a non-Office program) creates a new entry on the Clipboard toolbar. The contents of the Clipboard toolbar remain available as long as any Office application is running.
Each new item appears at the top of the Office Clipboard pane. When the Office Clipboard is visible and reaches its maximum of 24 items, cutting or copying another item drops the oldest item on the Clipboard.
To paste the contents of one specific copied item, position the insertion point where you want the item to appear, and then click the button for that item. To paste all the copied items into a document in the exact order they appear on the Clipboard toolbar, click Paste All.
If you're frustrated because the Paste All button is grayed out, see
"Paste All and the Office Clipboard"
in the
"Troubleshooting"
section at the end of this chapter.
To remove an individual item from the Office Clipboard, click the arrow to the right of the item and choose Delete. To clear all the Clipboard contents at once, click the Clear All button.
Note
The Windows Clipboard continues to operate just as it always does, without regard to the contents of the Office Clipboard. Every time you cut or copy a new item, it replaces the current contents of the Windows Clipboard. Whenever you use the Paste command in a non-Office program, the Windows Clipboard uses the last item you cut or copied.
Customizing the Office Clipboard
Click the Options button at the bottom of the Office Clipboard pane to display a shortcut menu that lets you customize its operation in any of the following ways:
If you find the Clipboard pane annoying, clear the Show Office Clipboard Automatically checkbox. In this configuration, the Clipboard pane will appear only when you specifically choose to display it.
If you want to collect a number of items but don't want the Clipboard pane to clutter up your workspace, check the Collect Without Showing Office Clipboard option.
When the Office Clipboard is active, a small icon appears in the notification area (also known as the system tray) at the right of the taskbar, and a brief message appears each time you copy an item. The two items at the bottom of the Options menu let you hide either or both of these indicators.
To stop the Office Clipboard from collecting any additional items, right-click the icon in the system tray and choose Stop Collecting from the shortcut menu. This immediately closes the Clipboard pane and removes the tray icon.