Using the Office Clipboard

In Office, Microsoft tried to improve the standard Windows Clipboard by augmenting it with an enhanced toolbar called the Office Clipboard. Unfortunately, the Office Clip­board toolbar was plagued with bugs and an annoying, half-baked interface that made it nearly useless. In Office XP, this feature is improved, although still not perfect. If you detested the Office Clipboard in its previous incarnation, we recommend trying it again in Office XP; you might find it more useful and manageable this time around.

How Office Extends the Windows Cupboard

Using the Office Clipboard, you can gather as many as 24 Office objects (that's twice as many as the Office Clipboard allowed) and then paste them—one at a time or all at once—into an Office document. The enhanced Clipboard can hold any data type that will fit in the Windows Clipboard, including text from a Word document; a dataset from an Access database; graphics (even the animated variety) for use in PowerPoint presentations or forms built in Word, Excel, or Access; and Excel charts or ranges.

Using the Office Clipboard, you can tackle any of the following tasks:

• Pull together excerpts from a large report to create an executive summary, talking points, or a press release.
• Gather background information from scattered files and assemble the appropriate parts into the first draft of a memo or report.
• Take a collection of briefing memos, one from each member of your committee, and stitch them together into a single report.
• Quickly collect a list of names or figures you expect to use repeatedly in a document.

The enhanced Clipboard is available in any Office application. It appears automatically ,if you copy or cut two Office items in sequence without an intervening paste— by pressing Ctrl+C twice in a row, for instance. To display the Office Clipboard pane manu­ally, choose Edit, Office Clipboard.

Questionnaire:

• Explain about using the Office clipboard?