Converting Clipboard Data into Alternative Formats

When you paste an item from the Clipboard into an Office document, the Office application examines the item to determine its data format—simple text, HTML, formatted text (so-called Rich Text Format), worksheet data, or one of many picture formats, for example. Before the Office application pastes the Clipboard contents, a negotiating procedure takes place in which the application attempts to discover the format that's most appropriate for the current contents.

In some cases, however, you might want to translate the Clipboard contents to a different format when pasting into another application (or even within the same application). For instance, when copying formatted text from one Office application to another—for example, the contents of an HTML-based Outlook e-mail message into Word—you typically don't want the original formatting to appear in the document where you're pasting the data. Instead, you want to transfer just the text, letting it take on the paragraph formatting defined in the Word document.

In Office XP, you have two opportunities to override the Office defaults and switch formats when using the Clipboard:

• Instead of using the default format, choose Edit, Paste Special, and select any available format from the As box (see Figure 6.2). In this case, Unformatted Text is the best choice.

  Figure 6.2. Use Paste Special when you want to choose the format of copied data before pasting it into a new document.

  

• After pasting the data, you can change its format by clicking the Paste Options Smart Tag (see Figure 6.3). In this example, we copied a range of cells from an Excel worksheet and pasted them into a PowerPoint slide. The Smart Tag shows additional formats available for the pasted data.

  Figure 6.3. After pasting data into an Office program, click the Paste Options Smart Tag to change the format of the data.

  

With an Excel worksheet range on the Clipboard, for instance, you can choose any of the following formats when pasting into a Word document:

• Microsoft Excel Worksheet Object— This is a good choice if you plan to update the data in the worksheet and you want to ensure that the latest numbers appear in the Word document whenever it's opened.

• Formatted Text (RTF)— This option converts the Excel range to a Word table, retaining text formatting such as fonts and colors from the original data.

• Unformatted Text— This option forces the text to take on the surrounding formatting in Word.

• Picture, Bitmap, Enhanced Metafile— Choose one of these formats to enable scaling and cropping, and to allow other kinds of picture formatting.

Tables 6.1–6.8 show the most common reformatting options when you paste data between Office 2000 applications.

Table 6.1. Paste Special Conversion Table—Pasting Text from Word into Word

Paste Special Format	Result
Microsoft Word Document Object	Embedded Word document with source file formatting.
Formatted Text (RTF)	Formatted the same as in the source file.
Unformatted Text	Formatting stripped; inserted text picks up paragraph style as defined at the insertion point.
Picture	Formatting the same as in the source file; text cannot be edited, and any resizing or cropping will cause the picture to be distorted.
HTML (default)	Uses styles and other formatting as defined in the source file; if target document includes styles with identical names, formatting adjusts accordingly.
Word Hyperlink	Inserts text using hyperlink character format and paragraph formatting from target, with link to source file.

Table 6.2. Paste Special Conversion Table—Pasting a Table from Word into Word

Paste Special Format	Result
Microsoft Word Document Object	Embedded Word document using formatting of source file.
Formatted Text (RTF)	Formatted as in source file.
Unformatted Text	Converts table to text, separating cells with tab characters, using paragraph formatting as defined at the insertion point.
Picture	Converts text to picture using fonts and other formatting from source file; table spacing not exact.
HTML (default)	Uses table formatting and styles as defined in source; if target document contains styles with identical names, uses those formats.
Word Hyperlink	Table is hyperlinked to source file.

Table 6.3. Paste Special Conversion Table—Pasting Text from Word into Excel

Paste Special Format	Result
Microsoft Word Document Object	Embedded Word document with source file formatting.
Picture (Enhanced Metafile)	Picture in source file's formatting; text cannot be edited, and text might be distorted if picture is scaled or resized.
HTML (default)	Text is pasted into workbook using source formatting; each paragraph occupies one Excel cell.
Text or Unicode Text	Each paragraph occupies one Excel cell, using cell formatting. For bulleted or numbered paragraphs, each bullet or number appears in one cell, with text in cell to its right.
Hyperlink	Text is all in one cell, hyperlinked to source.

Table 6.4. Paste Special Conversion Table—Pasting a Table from Word into Excel

Paste Special Format	Result
Microsoft Word Document Object	Embedded Word document with source file's formatting.
Picture (Enhanced Metafile)	Picture in source file's formatting.
HTML (default)	Table contents pasted into worksheet using source file's formatting. Cells might need to be resized.
Text or Unicode Text	Table contents pasted into worksheet using worksheet's formatting. Cells might need to be resized.
Paste as Hyperlink (on Edit menu)	Contents of table pasted into single cell and hyperlinked. (Thus, if the copied cells have the values 1, 2, and 3, Excel pastes the value 123 into a single cell.)

Table 6.5. Paste Special Conversion Table—Pasting Text from Word into the Body of a PowerPoint Slide

Paste Special Format	Result
HTML (default)	Pastes text into slide using formatting from source document. Text appears as single bullet point, regardless of paragraph marks.
Microsoft Word Document Object	Embedded Word document with source file formatting.
Picture	Picture of Word document with source file formatting.
Formatted Text (RTF)	Pastes text into slide with source file formatting; if source data contains paragraph marks, each paragraph becomes a bullet.
Unformatted Text	Pastes text into slide with target file's formatting.
Attach Hyperlink	Text is pasted; hyperlink doesn't work.

Table 6.6. Paste Special Conversion Table—Pasting a Range from Excel into Word

Paste Special Format	Result
Microsoft Excel Worksheet Object	Embedded worksheet in source file format.
Formatted Text (RTF)	Embedded worksheet in source file format.
Unformatted Text	Pastes as text, with contents of each cell separated by tab character and a paragraph mark at the end of each row.
Picture	Picture of worksheet range.
Bitmap	Picture of worksheet range, with gridlines.
Picture (Enhanced Metafile)	Picture of worksheet range, centered on Word page.
HTML (default)	Inserts as Word table, using fonts, column widths, and other formatting as defined in source range.
Word Hyperlink	Inserts as Word table, hyperlinked to source.

Table 6.7. Paste Special Conversion Table—Pasting a Chart from Excel into Word

Paste Special Format	Result
Microsoft Excel Chart Object (default)	Embedded chart, formatted as in source.
Picture	Picture of chart.
Picture (Enhanced Metafile)	Picture of chart, centered on Word page.
Paste as Hyperlink	Not available.

Table 6.8. Paste Special Conversion Table—Pasting a Chart from Excel into Body of a PowerPoint Slide

Paste Special Format	Result
Microsoft Excel Chart Object (default)	Embedded chart, formatting as in source, centered on slide.
Picture	Picture of chart; to edit, must be converted to Microsoft Drawing and then grouped.
Conventional Paste	Same as Microsoft Excel Chart Object.