When you are moving data between two programs, you probably just copy and paste. Power users automatically use the Ctrl + C and Ctrl + V shortcut keys to do this process quickly. Heck, they might even use Alt + Tab to switch between the two applications. For some content, this works great. But my focus today is to make you aware of the Paste Special command.

When you select Paste Special instead of Paste, you get a dialog box showing you all of the different formats available for pasting the data. The format listed first is what you get with the regular Paste command. Often I find the other formats are a lot more useful. Many programs offer the Paste Special command so you’ll just need to look for it in the same place you’d find the Paste command. Once you get in the habit, you’ll find that you get things done faster because you are getting the data in a better format.