Master the basics of working with your PC - Tutorial 3 - The Windows clipboard, cut copy and paste

Last updated October 27, 2009

Leaning how to use the Windows clipboard to cut, copy and paste text and other data is one of the best things you can do to make yourself more productive when working with Windows (or almost any other modern operating system!). This video will show you how to use the clipboard and share data between applications on your computer. It's much easier than it sounds!

Please wait a few moments while the video loads. When loading is complete, press the play button on the video control panel below the video to start playback.

Additional notes

Copy or Cut - Remember that when you copy data, it leaves the original data in place, whereas if you cut data, the original is removed.

Paste makes another copy - You might expect that, when you paste data from the clipboard, that it is moved from the clipboard back into your document. This isn't actually the case. Data that is pasted remains in the clipboard until you cut or copy some new data. This means you could cut or copy a picture and paste it several times into different documents, for example.