Lesson 5

Lesson 5
Copy and Paste

This is going to assume that you know nothing about the procedure of "copy/paste" so it may seem elementary to some, but essential information to others.
The same steps apply whether you want to make a good copy of an e-mail letter or just want to move some text from one place to another within the same document or into another document - "copy/paste" is a very helpful tool.
Highlight the portion of text you want to copy. You do this by pointing the cursor (the mouse pointer) to the BEGINNING of the text you want, then CLICK and HOLD that click while you slide the mouse down to the END of the text you want to work with.. Don't worry about "running off the page" - if you just hold that click, the mouse will force the page to move down and you'll get to the end. When you reach the end of your text, release the click. Now you've got what you want highlighted. (If you slide past the end, just maintain the click and slide the mouse up a little until you get back where you wanted to stop.) When you let go of the click, the entire selection will highlight and you'll see that it is now in black or blue or green - whatever colors your computer is set it use.
Click on Edit - then Click on Copy in the menu that drops down. This is true in probably 99.5% of the programs you're using. Now the selection is secure in your clipboard and you can go off and finish the procedure without worrying about where it went. You can not see the material in the clipboard.
Open your word processor. If you're using Windows, you click on Start, go up to Programs and then pick the program you want to use. MS Works does a pretty good job, as do MS Word and Word Perfect. A really simple one to use is Word Pad, but there are limitations there - not serious limitations though. Pick the word processor you're the most comfortable with though, so things seem familiar.
We recommend the open source suite called Open Office. www.openoffice.org You will use it in your emails that come with a PowerPoint attachment.
This software does everything that Microsoft software does and enables you to receive PowerPoint presentations in your emails. In the general sessions presentations are given on how to use this suite.
When your word processor program opens, you'll be looking at a "blank page" and now you Click on Edit - then Click on Paste.
Now you've got everything from the source put into a nice blank document, but quite often you'll have a lot of >>>> thingies in there. You can use the word processor to get rid of those - and get rid of some of the unnecessarily short lines.
Getting rid of the strange line spacing is where the Works, Word and Word Perfect programs come in handy. In those programs, if you click on the word View on the toolbar, you can then click on "Show All Characters," or "Show ¶" which is the same thing. When you see a dot between words, that indicates a space has been inserted using the Space bar. When you see a , that indicates a tab has been inserted using the Tab key, and when you see a ¶, that indicates a "hard return" has been inserted using the Enter key. Having a "hard return" there forces the line to end and start anew. Often you don't want that to happen, so if you see a ¶, you place your cursor just BEFORE it and touch the Delete key (OR place the cursor just AFTER it and touch the Back Space key).
When you have the desired text all "cleaned up" you can Click on Edit, Click on Select All (or with some programs Select, then click on Select All - some have a two-step process for this) then Click on Edit - Click on Copy. Now your text is back in the clipboard, just waiting for you to do something with it.
Go back to your e-mail program, go to Compose Mail and when you get to the Message box, Click on Edit - Click on Paste. Now you have a cleaned up document to send along to someone else, and they won't have to see all the strange things you did. Or you can just stay where you are in your word processor program and print it out if you want to pass it along to some "non-computerized" friends.
Click and Drag
When anything on your desktop is in a place you do not want it, just click on the area or item, hold down the mouse key and drag the item to the place you want it to go. This really helps when you misplace your tool bar or would like to rearrange the icons on your desktop. If your toolbar shifts mysteriously from the bottom of the page to the top or side of your desktop, just click on a blank spot on it and drag it to the bottom. You can group your icons according to usage. Icons that are not often used can be moved into a single folder by right clicking on an empty space on the desktop and labeling a folder as unused icons. Drag and drop the icons that you are not using into the folder. This not only saves space on the desktop it also helps the start up process to move a little faster.