Cutting and Pasting: A Quick Primer

Although the act of cutting and pasting text is second nature to most of us, some new Internet users may not understand exactly what is meant when they see the phrase "cut and paste." This brief primer is meant to provide a quick overview of the process for those readers.

Most of today's generation of programs support the use of the "electronic clipboard" functions "Copy, Cut" and "Paste," including the leading Web browsers: Netscape and Microsoft Internet Explorer. This comes in handy when you want to add scripts or code from a Web page, or just to copy from one document to another.

First, make the program you wish to cut or copy from the active window on your screen. You can do this by simply clicking on the program's title bar. Highlight the text you want to copy by clicking and holding your left mouse button at the beginning of the text you wish to copy while dragging the mouse to the bottom of the text (or page) you are copying. Keep the button depressed as you "drag" the cursor down the page or text. The text should now be highlighted in a different color. If the text was black and the page was white, the colors will now be reversed.

Now, go to the "Edit" menu option on the program you're using. On most programs it is second from the left on the menu. You'll want to choose "Copy" from the Edit menu. Or, you could instead use the shortcut, "Ctrl C," which simply means that you hold down the Control key on your keyboard at the same time you press the C key. Nothing will appear to change, but the content that you had highlighted is now on your computer's "clipboard," a memory area it stores such information.

In your new document, the one in which you want the info you just copied to appear, position your cursor where you would like the information to appear. Go to the "Edit" menu and click on "Paste" (or do a "Ctrl V"). You should now see the text you copied appear in your new document. You can edit it or move on to the next item you wish to "cut & paste." That's all there is to it!

You can also use the cutting and pasting feature while you are in a telnet session. You'll just go through the same motions as directed above. But when you are ready to paste, you'll have to position the cursor where you want it in the same fashion as you always do in a telnet session--by using the arrow keys on your keyboard, rather than your mouse.

That's all there is to cutting and pasting! Now have fun trying it out on some of the applets we have available on the Java Boutique!

This article first appeared in February, 1999

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