According to research conducted by Microsoft, using the Paste function often leads to unsatisfactory results. This is also confirmed by the fact that users in over 90% of cases use the Undo function immediately after the Paste command. The biggest problem here is that the data on the Clipboard can be inserted into the document in several ways. To make all this at least a little easier, the new version of Excel offers you the Paste Preview function, and in this lesson I will show you how to use it.

To begin, I will click on this table to immediately bring up the Table Tools option on the screen. I won’t need it for now, because at the moment I just want to select the data and transfer it to the Clipboard. This can be done by pressing the Control+A keys, but only the data in this table will be selected. Since I want the selection to cover the entire table, which includes the first and last row, I will press this key combination one more time and thus complete the first part of the work. To transfer all of this to the Clipboard, I just need to use the shortcut Control+C.

Since I now have everything I need at my disposal, I will switch to another worksheet and mark the place where I want the new data to appear. In order to show you how to use the Paste Preview function, instead of this big button, I will click on the arrow below it and in this way open the auxiliary menu. If I place the cursor over one of these options, the corresponding result will immediately appear on the screen. This means that you can immediately check how this table will look if the selected parameters are applied to its insertion. The same applies to any of the offered options, except that the first one represents the equivalent of the old Paste function. As you can see, only formulas and their results can be transferred to the new worksheet, but also everything related to formatting, including border lines and the width of individual columns. If you are only interested in data, choose one of the options from the second row. I believe that the short description that appears on the screen will be enough for you to understand what the individual options are for.

At the very bottom of the menu there is an option that allows you to convert this table into an image. Although this is not a real novelty of Excel, it is not bad to remind you of this possibility. Although the difference cannot be seen at first glance, the circles located in characteristic places confirm the fact that the entire content of this table has been converted into an image. This means that you can easily change its size and even the angle at which it is located. In any case, this element can be freely moved around the entire surface of the table.

To show you one more interesting thing, I’m going to delete this table and go back to the original content. As you can see, it is still on the Clipboard and I will use the simplest method to insert it – I will press the Control+V key combination. At that moment, the corresponding table will appear on the screen, but at the same time, the so-called Smart Tag, a menu that contains some of the functions that may be useful to you. In this case, these are options that are used to change the entered data, so it will not be difficult for you to subsequently change the appearance of this table. You must have noticed that these options match the content of the auxiliary menu that I showed you in the first part of the lesson. However, there is one difference, and it consists in the fact that simply moving the cursor will not result in the automatic application of the selected function. This means that you have to click on one of them for Excel to understand what you want to achieve.