Page 225 - Excel 2013 All-in-One For Dummies

Copying and Moving Stuff Around 207
to copy or move cells between different worksheets in the same workbook or between different workbook files unless you first set up windows in the Excel work area that display both the cells that you’re moving or copy-
ing and the cells into which they’re being moved or copied. (See Book II, Chapter 4, for information on setting up windows that enable this.) Use the cut-and-paste method (as described in the later section, “Carried away with cut-and-paste”) to move and copy cell selections beyond the current work- sheet when you don’t have such windows set up.
Moving cells with drag-and-drop
The only thing that you need to be mindful of when using drag-and-drop
is that you must position the mouse cursor on one of the edges of the cell range and wait until the pointer’s cursor changes shape from a thick white cross to an outlined arrowhead pointing to the center of a black cross, before you begin dragging the range to its new position in the worksheet. Also, when positioning the pointer on an edge of the range, avoid the lower- right corner because locating the pointer there transforms it into the Fill handle (a simple black cross) used by the AutoFill feature to extend the cell range rather than move the range.
As you drag a cell range using drag-and-drop, Excel displays only the out- line of the range with a ScreenTip that keeps you informed of its new cell or range address. After you’ve positioned the outline of the selected range so that the outline surrounds the appropriate cells in a new area of the work- sheet, simply release the mouse button or your finger or stylus from the touchscreen. Excel moves the selected cells (including the entries, format- ting, and comments) to this area.
If the outline of the cell selection that you’re dropping encloses any cells with existing data entries, Excel displays an Alert dialog box asking whether you want to replace the contents of the destination cells. If you click OK
in this dialog box, the overlaid data entries are completely zapped when they’re replaced by the incoming entries.
Copying cells with drag-and-drop
You can use drag-and-drop to copy cell ranges as well as to move them. To modify drag-and-drop so that the feature copies the selected cells rather than relocating them, hold down the Ctrl key when you position the mouse pointer on one of the edges of the selected range. Excel indicates that drag- and-drop is ready to copy rather than move the cell selection by changing the mouse pointer to an outline pointer with a small plus sign in the upper- right. When the pointer assumes this shape, you simply drag the outline of the selected cell range to the desired position and release both the Ctrl key and mouse button.
Book II Chapter 3
Editing and Proofing Worksheets