If you use Microsoft Windows on your computer, you would have definitely used its Windows or System Clipboard for copying and pasting text, pictures, files, etc., from one place to another. It is a very useful method to transfer or copy data on a computer. However, one significant limitation with Windows Clipboard is that if you want to copy (or cut) some text or other data such as a picture from a file and then paste it at some other place in the same file or in some other file, you can copy only one such text or data at one time. The moment you copy some other data to the Windows Clipboard, the earlier data copied to the Windows Clipboard gets automatically overwritten without any warning. Therefore, Windows Clipboard allows only single copy operation at a time.
On the other hand, if you have Microsoft Office installed on your computer, it supports Office Clipboard that can copy and paste multiple items. Office Clipboard can copy as many as 24 different items one after the other, and then you can selectively (or collectively) paste any one of the copied items (or all items in one go) to another location in the same or a different file. Thus, if you are carrying out the copy operation through Office Clipboard (instead of doing it through the regular Windows or System Clipboard), when you copy something on the second or subsequent occasion(s), your existing data on the Office Clipboard will not be overwritten and you can have up to 24 such copied items existing side-by-side. It is a much improved Clipboard thus.
Another big advantage with Microsoft Office Clipboard is that you can copy different types of objects to it at the same time. For example, you can copy some text from a Microsoft Word file, then copy an image object from Microsoft PowerPoint, then copy a table object in Microsoft Excel by selecting multiple cells at the same time or may be some graphical object, and then switch to Microsoft Internet Explorer to copy some text with some hyperlinks and images. All these objects can remain copied on Office Clipboard simultaneously. Now, finally you can switch to a new file in Microsoft Word and paste all the above copied items to this new file either one-by-one in whatever order or together. It is thus a great advantage over the traditional Windows Clipboard!
Moreover, Office Clipboard supports copy from any program on your computer which provides copy and cut functionality, and you need not be confined only to programs within Microsoft Office for copying purposes. However, multiple items copied to Office Clipboard can be pasted only into Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Microsoft Access, or Microsoft Outlook. But, the last item copied to Office Clipboard can be pasted to any other program as well; the only limitation is with multiple items being pasted into programs other than those included in Microsoft Office.
Office Clipboard works with the usual Copy, Cut and Paste commands and you can use the same keyboard shortcuts also, such as Ctrl + C for copy; Ctrl + X for cut; and, Ctrl + V for paste. Simply copy an item to the Office Clipboard in the usual manner to add it to your collection of items on it, then paste it from the Office Clipboard into any Office document by simply selecting it in Office Clipboard. The last item in Office Clipboard can be pasted in any program by performing the usual paste operation.
The items copied to the Office Clipboard will remain there until you quit all Microsoft Office programs which were running.
How to activate / display Office Clipboard?
On the Edit menu (in Microsoft Word or other Office program), click Office Clipboard. The Office Clipboard will now appear on the screen in the form of a sidebar. See the following image how it looks in Microsoft Word:
How to hide Office Clipboard?
To hide Office Clipboard, simply press the Close button on its top-right corner.
Various Options relating to Office Clipboard:
The bottom part of the above image showing Office Clipboard also displays various options relating to Office Clipboard as to how it can be shown automatically, or to show it when Ctrl+C keys are pressed twice, or to copy items silently to Office Clipboard without showing it. These options also include the option to show Office Clipboard icon on the taskbar and the option to show status near taskbar when copying an item. You can select these options as per your liking and requirements. These options are self-explanatory.
How to copy items to Office Clipboard:
To copy items to the Office Clipboard, it must be open in the task pane of any Microsoft Office program (as shown in the image above) or the Collect Without Showing Office Clipboard option must be turned on, as described above.
As mentioned above, you can show the Office Clipboard in the task pane of any Office program such as Microsoft Word by clicking Office Clipboard on the Edit menu.
If you open the Office Clipboard in the task pane of any one Office program, it does not automatically appear when you switch to another Office program. However, you can still copy multiple items from other programs. Whenever an item is copied to Office Clipboard from any program, a message is displayed above the status area to indicate that.
To copy multiple items to Office Clipboard, you activate it in any one Office program. Now, you can copy items from any Microsoft Office program (such as Word, Excel, PowerPoint, etc.) or from any other programs by using the normal Copy command or the Cut command, or by using their keyboard shortcuts such as Ctrl+C or Ctrl+X. All items so copied are collected by Office Clipboard up to a limit of a total of 24 items. If you exceed the limit of 24 items, then the 25th item will automatically replace the 1st item in the copied collection and so on. The maximum number of copied items in Office Clipboard can be 24 only. All these copied items will appear on the Office Clipboard displayed in the task pane of any Office program. For example, see the following image, which shows several items copied to the Office Clipboard simultaneously:
Now, see the next image which depicts a Word document in which all these items copied from various programs have been pasted together (the image does not show all pasted items, due to page size restrictions):
Thus, you can easily see the utility of the Office Clipboard! In fact, once you start using Office Clipboard regularly, you’ll find that Windows Clipboard is very obsolete.
How to paste items from Office Clipboard?
You can paste items from the Office Clipboard individually, or all at once.
If you simply want to paste the last item copied to the Office Clipboard to any program on your computer, then simply use the Paste command in that program or use the keyboard shortcut for it (such as Ctrl+V).
As already mentioned, multiple items available on the Office Clipboard can be pasted to any of the Microsoft Office programs (other programs will accept only the last copied item and not the multiple items copied to Office Clipboard).
To copy any of the multiple items available on the Office Clipboard to any Office program, move the cursor to the desired location in that Office program (such as Word) and then simply click on that specific copied item in the Office Clipboard displayed in the task pane (you can display it by clicking Office Clipboard on Edit menu). The selected item will be pasted at the desired location.
To copy all the multiple items available in Office Clipboard together in any Office program, click the Paste All button in the Office Clipboard.
How to clear all copied items from the Clipboard?
To clear the Office Clipboard of all the items that are presently available on it, simply click the Clear All button in it. This will empty the Office Clipboard.
How Office Clipboard is related to the Windows or the System Clipboard?
The interaction between the Office Clipboard and the Windows Clipboard is defined as under:
Conclusion:
The Office Clipboard is thus a very powerful feature of the Microsoft Office. If can help you immensely if you do a lot of copy and paste operations in Office programs. In particular, in addition to what has been stated above, if you cut or copy some item and subsequently by mistake again copy something else, if you are using Windows Clipboard your earlier copied item is lost or overwritten (unless you are in a position to undo multiple times); however, if you are using Office Clipboard your last 24 items which have been cut or copied are saved in it and are available for being pasted in Office programs. Thus, Office Clipboard can also help you if you accidentally overwrite any item cut from some document by again copying and cutting something else.
Overall, Office Clipboard offers some very useful functionality which in fact should have been present in Windows Clipboard itself.
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