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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.

learn microsoft excel

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.

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About the Author:Martin Brinkmann is a journalist from Germany who founded Ghacks Technology News Back in 2005. He is passionate about all things tech and knows the Internet and computers like the back of his hand. You can follow Martin on Facebook or Twitter.

Author: , Monday October 13, 2008 -
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Responses so far:

  1. Of course, this works with Open Office as well.

  2. Parthi1010 says:

    Alternate Method to smart Paste is to import the text data in excel.

    1. Save the text file either comma or tab separated data
    2. In MS Excel menu >>DATA>>Import External Data>>Import Data
    3. Chose the file, Click Delimited >> Next
    4. Click TAB & Comma in Delimiters >> Next >> Finish

    Thats it …..

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