Cut/copy/paste data

Use basic clipboard operations

To cut, copy and paste data in the current spreadsheet make use of the right-click menu or use the corresponding icons of the Spreadsheet Editor available on any tab of the top toolbar,

In the online version, the following key combinations are only used to copy or paste data from/into another spreadsheet or some other program, in the desktop version, both the corresponding buttons/menu options and key combinations can be used for any copy/paste operations:

Note: instead of cutting and pasting data within the same worksheet you can select the required cell/cell range, hover the mouse cursor over the selection border so that it turns into the Arrow icon and drag and drop the selection to the necessary position.

To enable / disable the automatic appearance of the Paste Special button after pasting, go to the File tab > Advanced Settings... and check / uncheck the Cut, copy and paste checkbox.

Use the Paste Special feature

Note: For collaborative editing, the Pase Special feature is available in the Strict co-editing mode only.

Once the copied data is pasted, the Paste Special button appears next to the lower right corner of the inserted cell/cell range. Click this button to select the necessary paste option.

When pasting a cell/cell range with formatted data, the following options are available:

When pasting the contents of a single cell or some text within autoshapes, the following options are available:

Paste delimited text

When pasting the delimited text copied from a .txt file, the following options are available:

The delimited text can contain several records, and each record corresponds to a single table row. Each record can contain several text values separated with a delimiter (such as a comma, semicolon, colon, tab, space or other characters). The file should be saved as a plain text .txt file.

Text import wizard

If you pasted delimited data from a source that is not a plain text file (e.g. text copied from a web page etc.), or if you applied the Keep text only feature and now want to split the data from a single column into several columns, you can use the Text to Columns option.

To split data into multiple columns:

  1. Select the necessary cell or column that contains data with delimiters.
  2. Switch to the Data tab.
  3. Click the Text to columns button on the top toolbar. The Text to Columns Wizard opens.
  4. In the Delimiter drop-down list, select the delimiter used in the delimited data.
  5. Click the Advanced button to open the Advanced Settings window in which you can specify the Decimal and Thousands separators.

    Separator settings window

  6. Preview the result in the field below and click OK.

After that, each text value separated by the delimiter will be located in a separate cell.

If there is some data in the cells to the right of the column you want to split, the data will be overwritten.

Use the Auto Fill option

To quickly fill multiple cells with the same data use the Auto Fill option:

  1. select a cell/cell range containing the required data,
  2. move the mouse cursor over the fill handle in the right lower corner of the cell. The cursor will turn into the black cross:

  3. drag the handle over the adjacent cells to fill them with the selected data.

Note: if you need to create a series of numbers (such as 1, 2, 3, 4...; 2, 4, 6, 8... etc.) or dates, you can enter at least two starting values and quickly extend the series selecting these cells and dragging the fill handle.

Fill cells in the column with text values

If a column in your spreadsheet contains some text values, you can easily replace any value within this column or fill the next blank cell selecting one of already existing text values.

Right-click the necessary cell and choose the Select from drop-down list option in the contextual menu.

Select from drop-down list

Select one of the available text values to replace the current one or fill an empty cell.