Learn Microsoft Excel: Smart Paste

Ashish Mohta posted an interesting Microsoft Excel tip at his website that explained how to smart paste contents from Notepad into Microsoft Excel. The procedure is actually working with any kind of text editor not just Notepad.

When you normally copy paste contents into Microsoft Excel they will all be stored in the same cell in the Excel application. That is usually not the desired way of presenting the information. It is possible to copy and paste the contents into other cells or prepare the text in the text editor in a way that the contents are automatically copied into separate cells.

Pasting text into different Excel cells can be done by making use of the TAB key in the text editor. Pressing Tab represents a new cell in Excel when pasting the contents into Microsoft Excel. To create a four column layout in Excel one would simply write down the name of the first column, press tab, write down the name of the second column, press tab and so on.

The same holds true for additional rows. Just make sure to press tab only once even if the contents do not match in the text editor they will in Microsoft Excel. So even if the columns in the text editor will not look even they will be perfectly fine in Microsoft Excel.