Copy and paste multiple items by using the Office Clipboard

The Microsoft Office Clipboard allows you to copy multiple text and graphical items from Office documents or other programs and paste them into another Office document. For example, you can copy text from an e-mail message, data from a workbook or datasheet, and a graphic from a presentation and then paste them all into a document. By using the Office Clipboard, you can arrange the copied items the way that you want in the document.What do you want to do?

Learn more about how the Office Clipboard works

Turn on the Office Clipboard

Control how the Office Clipboard is displayed

Turn off the Office Clipboard

Copy multiple items to the Office Clipboard

Paste items

Delete items from the Office Clipboard

Learn more about how the Office Clipboard works

The Office Clipboard works with the standard Copy and Paste commands. Just copy an item to the Office Clipboard to add it to your collection, and then paste it from the Office Clipboard into any Office document at any time. The collected items stay on the Office Clipboard until you exit all Office programs or you delete the items from the Clipboard task pane.

After you exit all Office programs, only the last item that you copied stays on the Office Clipboard. When you exit all Office programs and restart your computer, the Office Clipboard is cleared of all items.

The Office Clipboard and the system Clipboard

The Office Clipboard is related to the system Clipboard in Microsoft Windows in the following ways:

• When you copy multiple items to the Office Clipboard, the last item that you copy is always copied to the system Clipboard.
• When you clear the Office Clipboard, the system Clipboard is also cleared.
• When you use the Paste command, the Paste button, or the keyboard shortcut CTRL+V, you paste the contents of the system Clipboard, not the Office Clipboard.

Turn on the Office Clipboard

To display the Office Clipboard in the task pane, do the following in these Office programs:

Access, Excel, Outlook, PowerPoint, or Word

• On the Home tab (Message tab in Outlook), in the Clipboard group, click the Clipboard Dialog Box Launcher.

  

Publisher or SharePoint Designer

• On the Edit menu, click Office Clipboard.

Control how the Office Clipboard is displayed

You can use the following options to control how the Office Clipboard is displayed.

1. In the Clipboard task pane, click Options.

   

2. Click the options that you want.

Option	Description
Show Office Clipboard Automatically	Automatically displays the Office Clipboard when copying items.
Show Office Clipboard When CTRL+C Pressed Twice	Automatically displays the Office Clipboard when you press CTRL+C twice.
Collect Without Showing Office Clipboard	Automatically copies items to the Office Clipboard without displaying the Clipboard task pane.
Show Office Clipboard Icon on Taskbar	Displays the Office Clipboard icon in the status area of the system taskbar when the Office Clipboard is active. This option is turned on by default.
Show Status Near Taskbar When Copying	Displays the collected item message when copying items to the Office Clipboard. This option is turned on by default.

Turn off the Office Clipboard

Do any of the following:

• In the Clipboard task pane, click the Close button.

  

• In the Clipboard task pane, click the arrow, and then on the menu, click Close.

  

• Press F6 to give the Clipboard task pane the focus. Press CTRL+SPACEBAR, and then, using the DOWN ARROW key, scroll to Close and press ENTER.

Copy multiple items to the Office Clipboard

1. Open the file that you want to copy items from.
2. Select the first item that you want to copy.
3. Do one of the following in these Office programs:

   Access, Excel, Outlook, PowerPoint, or Word

   • On the Home tab, in the Clipboard group, click Copy.

     Keyboard shortcut CTRL+C

   Publisher or SharePoint Designer

   • On the Edit menu, click Copy.

     Keyboard shortcut CTRL+C

4. Continue copying items from the same or other files until you have collected all of the items that you want. The Office Clipboard can hold up to 24 items. If you copy a twenty-fifth item, the first item on the Office Clipboard is deleted.

   If you open the Clipboard task pane in one Office program, the Clipboard task pane does not automatically appear when you switch to another Office program. However, you can continue to copy items from other programs. If the Show Status Near Taskbar When Copying option is selected (to verify, click Options in the Clipboard task pane), a message is displayed above the status area to indicate that an item has been added to the Office Clipboard.

   

   As items are added to the Office Clipboard, an entry is displayed in the Clipboard task pane. The newest entry is always added to the top. Each entry includes an icon representing the source Office program and a portion of copied text or a thumbnail of a copied graphic.

Notes:

• The Office Clipboard is not available in views where the Copy, Cut, and Paste commands are not available.
• Collected items remain on the Office Clipboard until you exit all Office programs that are running on your computer or click Clear All in the Clipboard task pane. For more information, see Delete items from the Office Clipboard.
• In some cases, such as Unicode text, the image displayed in the task pane looks slightly altered. This is because text is always displayed in the task pane by using the Tahoma font. However, the correct formatting and font information is restored when the item is pasted from the task pane.
• The Office Clipboard does not support copying Office Access objects, such as a form or report.

Paste items

You can paste items from the Office Clipboard individually or all at the same time.

1. Click where you want the items to be pasted. You can paste collected items into any Office program.
2. Do one of the following:
   • To paste items one at a time, in the Clipboard task pane, double-click each item that you want to paste.
   • To paste all the items that you copied, in the Clipboard task pane, click Paste All.

   • 

Note The Office Clipboard does not support the Paste Special command. However, the Paste Special command is available in Office programs.

Delete items from the Office Clipboard

You can delete items from the Office Clipboard individually or all at the same time.

In the Clipboard task pane, do one of the following:

• To clear one item, click the arrow next to the item that you want to delete, and then click Delete.

  

• To clear all items, click Clear All.