Using “Paste Special” (“Paste Special”)

“Paste Special” is an option that Excel gives us to copy only certain elements of the data from the original location to paste into the new location.

For example you can copy a “Formula” and use “Paste Special” (“Paste Special”) to paste only the value of this “Formula” into another cell.

Select a cell that you want to copy and click the “Copy” button   in the “Standard toolbar”.

Choose a target cell.

Then click “Edit” menu in the toolbar and select “Paste Special “.

Now the “Paste Special” dialog box opens.

Here we can choose what we want to paste in our target cell.

everything, “Formula”, values, formatting, etc..

Example, if we have a “Formula” in cell A2, which has a value of 2000, and copy and paste with “Paste Special” to cell A5, with a number 3000 in it.
We can then add, subtract, or do whatever with the values of these two cells.
For example. We select cell A2 with our formula and click on “Copy”
Then we select the cell A5 with our number, and clicking on “Edit” – “Paste Special”.
We choose “Values” in the “Paste” section of the dialog and choose “Add” in the “Operation” section.

We click on OK, and the result in cell A5 will be 5000.

Slices of linked formulas

We can link “Formulas” between “Workbooks”.

Change the value of the “Formula” in the first “Workbook”, then the value is automatically updated in the linked “Formula” in the second folder.

We select the “Formula” in the first “Workbook” that we want to copy and click “Copy”.

Then we select the second “Workbook”, select a cell and click on “Paste Special”.

In the dialog we click on the left bottom ” Paste Link” button.

The cell address reference is really the only thing that is copied.

If we examine the “Formula” here in our “Workbook”, we see the following,
See the “Workbook” (“group_names.xls”) then the “Worksheet” (“sheet1”) and then the “Cell reference” $B$6.

When we use linked formulas, you can not change of place of the various “Worksheets” on your Hard Disk or give another name, otherwise Excel will no longer display the “Formula”.

If we now modify data in the original “Workbook”, and then we open the linked “Workbook”, then Excel will inform us that the original has been changed, and whether or not we want to “Update” the linked “Workbook”.
You can choose between “Update” and “Don’t Update”.

Usually, the answer is “Update”, otherwise the linked “Workbook” has little meaning.

Featured Courses

• Downloading iPad Apps
• Lesson 1: Introduction to Publisher
• Lesson 65: File Formats