By Dave Wallace

RIVER BENDER - November, 1999

One can copy just about anything you see in your PC or on the Internet. Once copied and before it gets pasted the copy resides at an invisible place in your PC called a "clipboard." It remains there until something else is copied on top of it or your PC is shut down. Once on the clipboard numerous copies of the information can be pasted to just about anywhere. What can be copied? Text is the most copied item but one can copy folders, files, graphic images, sounds, music, etc. You can even copy pictures on web pages by right clicking on them. Here are a few examples of copying and pasting:

COPY A FOLDER AND ALL CONTENTS:

Suppose you have a folder full of data files on the C drive and you want to move a copy of the folder and its contents to the D drive. Right click on the folder and select COPY. Go to the D drive, right click on it and select PASTE. If you had wanted to move the folder rather than copying it, select CUT instead of COPY.

COPY A FILE FROM ONE FOLDER TO ANOTHER FOLDER:

There's several ways to do this. One way is to find the file, right click on it, select COPY, and then go to the other folder, right click on it and select PASTE. Another way is have both folders showing on your desktop by shrinking their displays if necessary. With the CTRL key down drag the file with the mouse from one folder to the next. Without the CTRL key held down the file is moved as opposed to being copied.

CREATE A FOLDER TO PASTE STUFF IN:

Let's create a "humor" folder" where you can keep copies of jokes you get by e-mail. Go to MY COMPUTER and select the drive and folder where you want a new folder to be located. Go to FILE/NEW, select FOLDER then change the name of the new folder to HUMOR or whatever you want to call it.

PUT A SHORTCUT ICON FOR WORDPAD ON THE DESKTOP:

WordPad is a simple word processor. It's where I paste temporary text so I have it on the desktop for quick access. Here's how to put a shortcut icon for Wordpad on the desktop: Go to START/FIND/FILES and type wordpad. Find the wordpad entry that says "application", right click on it and select "create shortcut" followed by "yes."

SAVE A E-MAIL JOKE IN THE HUMOR FOLDER:

Let's suppose somebody sent you some jokes by e-mail and you want to save one of them in the new Humor folder created above. Here's how: Scan the joke in the e-mail message by holding down your left mouse button until the joke is highlighted and select EDIT/COPY. Retire your mail program to the taskbar so you can see the desktop and click on the Wordpad icon you created. When it opens select EDIT/PASTE and the joke become pasted. Select FILE/SAVE AS. When the display comes up find the Humor folder using "Save in" at the top. Type a name for the joke file at the bottom. Lastly, select the type document that you want it to be, which will usually be a text document,and click Save. Alternatively, you could have saved the whole e-mail message in the Humor folder by using EDIT/SELECT ALL/COPY instead of highlighting text. Or with the e-mail message displayed select FILE/SAVE AS and tell it where the folder is and what to call the file.

CLEANING UP A MESSAGE BEFORE FORWARDING:

I hate to get a message with lots of garbage addresses, short line wraparounds and lots of ">>>>s" which happens when a message is forwarded and forwarded and forwarded. If I plan to send it on here's what I do. After clicking on "forward message" I scan (highlight) all the garbage I want removed and select EDIT/CLEAR or CUT or DELETE depending on the mail program. Getting rid of the ">>>>s" and line lengths is another matter because not all e-mail programs have a "Find/Replace" capability. But WordPad does. So I copy the e-mail message to WordPad on the desktop and use EDIT/REPLACE entering ">" to be replaced by nothing. After the editing is done I copy/paste the text back to my outgoing e-mail message.