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Learning how to copy, cut, and paste is simple and is something every computer user should know how to do. It saves an immense amount of time when manageing text, images, files, and folders.
I imagine you're wondering what the difference is between copying and cutting. Here's the difference between the two..
Copying means that you are simply recording and saving an item for future placement in a text file, document, program, or similar. The item can be anything from text, to a file, or even an image. It's important to note that the item being copied will stay in its original location.
Cutting means that you are cutting away or permanently removing an item from its original location to be placed in another location.
Here, let me give you some good examples....
Let's say that you are surfing the Internet and you stumble upon an article of text that you would like to save to your computer for future use. Here's what you would do.
First you would hightlight the text. This can be done by hovering your cursor in front of the first word of the text you want to save. Hold down the left button of your mouse and then drag your coursor to the right and down until you reach the end of the text that you want to save. Now release the left button of your mouse. This will highlight the text.
Figure 1
Once you get to the end of the text, The text should now be hightlighted like the text seen below.....
Figure 2
Now that the text is highlighted, hover the cursor over the highlighted text and right click. A menu will show up . Left click the option "copy". Your text is now copied!
The final step is to paste it. To paste your copied text, first open Notepad, Microsoft Wordpad, or Microsoft Word. Place your cursor in the open window of your program . Right click and choose the option "paste". The text that you copied should now appear in your text document. There you have it! You're first copy and paste my friend!
This process can also be done with files and folders and is just as simple as copying and pasting text.
To copy a file or folder, Place your cursor over the file or folder and select it by left clicking it one time. Once the item is selected, simply right-click and select the menu option "copy" .
Now navigate to location that you would like to place the file or folder and then right-click and select the menu option "paste".
In the above example I am copying a folder located in my documents and pasting it onto my desktop. The original file is still located in my documents and now there is a duplicate or "copy" of the file on my desktop .
Copying and pasting an image is very similar to copying and pasting text or a file. Here's what you do..
First select the image by left clicking on the image one time. Once the image is selected, right-click on the image and select the menu option "copy image" or "copy".
After that, you can paste the image into the software program of your choice such as, Microsoft Word, Photoshop, or Microsoft paint. The image can then be saved to your computer.
As you can see copying and pasting is simple. Now let's talk a little bit about how to cut and paste items.
Quite honestly cutting and pasting is just about the same as copying and pasting. To cut and paste you would follow the instructions that we just went over. The only difference is that when you cut a file, folder, or piece of text, it no longer remains in its original location. Think of it this way, you are simply cutting away the item and pasting it into its final resting place, unless of course you decide to move it in the future.
I'd like to add some final notes on how to copy, cut, and paste.
- You CAN copy an item that is on your computer OR that is online.
- Keep in mind that you CANNOT cut an item that is online. Items that are online can only be copied. Items such as text and images can only be cut if they are available on your computer.
Well thank you for reading this tutorial and I hope you found it helpful. To learn more about computers, click one of the links below.
