Copy, Cut, and Paste Text

Some of the most important things you can do while editing is copying, cutting, and pasting text. These features allow you to move text, delete it, or make a copy of it to place elsewhere.

Before you can copy, cut or paste your text let's first learn how to select text by following these few simple instructions:

• Place your cursor at the beginning of the word or phrase you want to select
• Press and hold the left mouse button while you drag the cursor to the end of the word or phrase

Copy

When you copy text you are actually duplicating a section of a document and placing it on the clipboard. After copying, you can paste it somewhere else.

Now let's copy the text you selected by following these basic steps:

• Select text
• Select the Copy button from the Standard toolbar

Cut

When you use the cut feature of AbiWord, you actually remove items from a document and place it on the clipboard. This is one way to delete text. However, because the text is transferred to the clipboard, it is not lost forever. You can copy the buffer somewhere else in the document or in another document, which is called pasting. To move a section of text from one place to another, therefore, you need to first cut it and then paste it. This is often called cut-and-paste.

Let's first cut some of your text by following these steps:

• Select text you wish to cut
• Select the Cut button from the Standard toolbar

Paste

Pasting text takes text from the clipboard and places it in the document you're working on at the cursor's location.

Let's paste the text you previously cut somewhere else in your document by following these few simple instructions:

• Select the location where you want to paste the text
• Select thePaste button from the Standard toolbar

You have just completed this section of Lesson 2 and can now copy, cut, and paste text throughout your document. If you'd like to learn how to undo or redo an action, select Next. If you'd like to go to a different section within this lesson or to a new lesson, choose from one of the options in the Navigation bar.