CUT COPY PASTE
and
E-MAIL (and more)
   The single, most-used function that computers have brought into homes all over the world is word processing. The home computer and printer has all but replaced the typewriter. With color inkjet printers available for around $50 or less and computers systems for under $500 it would seem that the death of the typewriter is imminent and that is not necessarily a bad thing.

   The computer supplies all sorts of abilities and functions when it comes to dealing with words that a typewriter never could. With a typewriter your information had to be processed in a linear manner- that is, if you were writing a story you had to write it from beginning to end, in order. With a computer, you can write from the middle out if you wish. Words, sentences, paragraphs, and whole pages of text can be easily copied, deleted, moved and rearranged at will- quickly and easily- once you know how.

   In conjunction with word processing being the most popular use for computers, E-Mail is the most popular online activity. Many people report that the only reason they went online was to make use of E-Mail to quickly and easily communicate with family and friends that live too far away for regular communication by other means. If you Combine these two processes- word processing and E-mail, there are a lot of ways to make the creation of E-Mail messages easier. To those ends (and more), I present a quick lesson on basic text manipulation.

   Let's start by setting the scene. You have written a story or letter in your word processing program (such as Microsoft Word, Wordperfect, or even Notepad). You want to include this story as part of an E-mail to a number of relatives. Obviously, you don't want to have to type this story over and over for each letter you are going to send out and since you want it to be part of the body of the message itself, sending it as an attachment to the E-Mail message is not what you have in mind. Follow these easy steps to copy the story and place it in any number of messages:

1) Start by opening your word processing program (whatever application in which you normally write). Also open your E-mail application.

2) In your E-mail program create new E-Mail messages, one for each person to whom you are going to send the letter. Write that portion of the letter that will be unique to each letter; Dear Uncle Bob, thanks for the flowers; Dear Grandpa, I am glad you called, etc.

3) Go back to your word processing program and open the file with the story you wish to send to each person. (Of course, this can be any text file with information you wish to send someone. It doesn't have to be a story per se.)

4) For the purposes of this lesson we are taking for granted here that you wish to send the entire story and not just part of it. The next step is to copy the entire story. The easiest way is to:

4a) Left Mouse Click anywhere in the story to place the cursor in the text area. It doesn't matter where for this step as long as the cursor is in the text area and not elsewhere.

4b) Hold down the Ctrl key and hit the letter "A" on the keyboard. This key combination [CTRL+A] is for 'select all' and will "mark" the entire letter. You will notice that all the text has changed to the background color, and all the background has changed to the text color- the colors have reversed. This shows that the text is "marked" or in other words, selected.

An example of a text block marked with CTRL+A

4c) Now hit CTRL+C [Hold down the "Ctrl" key and hit the "C" on the keyboard]. Your computer may make a sound when this happens. This key combo means "copy." A copy of the marked text now resides on the "clipboard" and the original text is unchanged.

   The clipboard is an area in the computer that holds the last thing that you copied. It stays there (even if you turn the computer off) until you copy something else. The default clipboard only holds one item at a time.

   Be careful when you copy using the CTRL+C key combination. There is also a key combination of CTRL+X that "Cuts" the text and places it on the clipboard. That means that the text that is marked is removed. If this happens accidentally, don't panic. Without moving the cursor, touching the mouse, or hitting any other keys, hit "CTRL+V" and the removed text will be pasted back in the same location. Additionally, these actions do not affect the original file that was saved to your hard drive unless you have 'auto-save' on and the application automatically saves the file after the change was made. Additionally, most applications have an "Undo" function that will undo the last thing you changed. This is often available as CTRL+Z.

5) Go back to your E-mail program and using your pointing device (your mouse) left click in one of your E-Mail messages where you want the story to be placed. Be sure that the cursor is in the proper location in the BODY of the message and not in the Subject area or anywhere else.

6) Once the cursor is placed in your E-Mail message, hit CTRL+V. This is the key combo for "Paste." This places a COPY of the text you copied from step 4 at the present location of the cursor. The important thing to remember is that you have placed a COPY of the original text. The story still is on the clipboard and can be pasted over and over. This makes is necessary to mention that when you hit the CTRL+V combination to be sure that you only hit it once. It will actually paste a copy every time you hit those keys.

   The fact that the copied story remains on the clipboard is important to remember. You can continue to open new E-Mail messages and paste the same story into them over and over.

   In the example above I explained how to mark and copy an entire story. Let's say that there is only a portion of a story you wish to copy. That's easy as well.

1) Place your cursor in front of the first word of the text block you wish to copy. The phrase, "text block" is merely a way to express a group of words, sentences, or paragraphs.

2) Use the scroll bars (if necessary) to find the last word of the text block you wish to copy. Again, it can be any number of words, sentences, or paragraphs.

3) When you find the last word of the text block you are selecting, hold down the "Shift" key and click the cursor after the last word of the text block you are copying. When you click there the text block will be selected as described above. The difference here is that instead of selecting all the text with CTRL+C you are selecting just the portion of your choice.

   You can now copy (CTRL+C) this selected text block to place a copy of it on the clipboard.

   Of course, this can be used in other ways as well. You can move text blocks within a story to arrange a story as you like or portions of a story (or stories) can be copied and pasted into another document.

   One text block can be used to replace another text block. Once you have copied or cut a text block and it is on the clipboard as described above, mark the block that will be replaced and hit CTRL+V. The clipboard text will replace the marked text.

   A selected text block can be 'dragged' to another part of a document after selecting it as well. After selecting it, left click-and-hold on the selected text block and drag it to where you want it. When there, simply release the mouse button. When moving a text block more that a screen's distance, it is easiest to cut and paste. First select and mark it as described above, then cut it using CTRL+X. Place the cursor where the text will be moved to, and hit CTRL+V.

   There are at least two more ways to select text blocks. Double-clicking on a word selects a single word. Triple-clicking on a word selects the sentence it is in, and quadruple-clicking selects the entire paragraph containing the word. Text blocks can also be selected by click-and dragging. Left-click-and-hold in front of a word, then drag and release after the last word of the text block.

   The two text block marking methods that include click-and-drag and clicking before and after the text block also work backwards. For example, you can click and start dragging at the end of the block and stop at the beginning of the block. For more information consult your application's manual or help file.

   If you don't like using the keyboard shortcuts for Cut/Copy/Paste, these functions are also available from the right-click menu. After marking the text block of your choice, right mouse click anywhere on the page. The pop-up menu will contain a number of things, depending on the specific application, but Cut, Copy, and Paste will usually be three of the choices.

   Cut/Copy/Paste is also available in the "Edit" drop down menu in most applications. This method is preferred by some, but it slower than the other two methods of accessing the Cut/Copy/Paste functions described above.

   These methods are fairly universal with most Windows applications and portions of these will even work in some Mac applications as well. You may find that some don't work with some applications. Trial and error will show you which work and which do not.

   *1 In many E-Mail applications the same message can be sent to multiple addresses. The best way to do this is to use "BCC" or Blind Carbon Copy. This sends the same message to multiple recipients but suppresses the "TO" portion of the letter so no one will see who has been sent the message except you. This method is easier and faster for you and the mail server. Check your E-Mail application's help file for more on this.

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