Copy Cat: Open, Copy, Paste, Undo

The first thing we have to do is open our word processing software. Let's just click on the word processing icon on the desktop.

The next thing we need to do is retrieve the document we saved before we took a break. Remember, it was called "Practice" and was filed in the "My Documents" directory on the C: drive.

To open the document, we could go to the File pull-down menu and click on Open, but this time, let's just use the Open icon on the toolbar.

We use the Open box to navigate back to the C: drive. Then we locate the "My Documents" folder. We set the File type to All Files and look for "Practice". Sure enough, it's there with two different icons representing the two different file types we specified.

The icon with the "W" represents Microsoft Word. The icon that looks like a legal pad represents Text format.

This time let's use the document in Text format. We'll double click on it. The first trick we want to learn is how to copy one section of a document into another section of the document. Let's say we want to copy the first sentence and palce it at the end of the document. It will then appear in two places. This is very easy to do.

First we use the mouse to highlight the whole first sentence. We do this by dragging the mouse across the sentence while holding the left mouse button down. Notice that the letters have turned from black on white to white on black. Next we go to the Edit pull-down menu and click on Copy. Now, we use the mouse to move the cursor to the end of the document. We go back to the Edit menu and Click on Paste. Now our sentence is in two places, at the beginning and at the end of the document.

We can do what we just did even more easily by using the Copy and Paste icons on the toolbar. We just highlight the sentence we want to copy; click on the Copy icon; use the mouse to place the cursor where we want the copy, and click on the Paste icon. There, Thes sentence now appears in three places. That was a neat trick, but it makes a pretty ridiculous document. Fortunately, there's another trick that makes it easy for us to change our mind. It's the Undo command. Let's try it.

Let's go to the Edit pull-down menu, and click on Undo Paste. There. The last thing we did, which was to paste that sentence at the beginning of the document, is undone. We could also have used the Undo icon in the toolbar. Let's try it. Now we've undone our last two instructions. The Undo command can be a very useful tool if we just remember it's there.