Tech Yoda's Tip of the Week: Spike that Text

Sometimes I find myself needing to move several chunks of text from one document into one new one.  Rather than cut, paste, cut, paste, cut, paste back and forth between documents, wouldn't it be great to be able to cut all the chunks together and then paste them at once?

Well Happy Tuesday to you, because you're about to learn how to do just that.  This hidden feature of Microsoft programs is called a "spike" and it works a little different in each program.  I'll cover Word/Outlook & Excel, since those are the primary programs you might find this useful in.

Microsoft Word and Outlook
Rather than using Ctrl + x or selecting "cut" from the menu, highlight whatever text you're going to move to the new document and use the shortcut Ctrl + F3.  Move to the next section of text you want to move and do the same thing.  Once you've grabbed all the text from the document you're starting with, navigate to the new document.  Put your cursor wherever you want the cut text to be pasted, and either:

• type Ctrl + Shift + F3, or
• type "spike (no quote marks) and then hit F3

All the text you selected from the first document should then paste into the new document in one chunk.

Note: this function will ONLY cut text--not copy.  If you need the original text to remain intact, you either need to do the traditional copy, paste, copy, paste method or save the document with a new name so that you can cut away at it and still keep the original intact.

Microsoft Excel
Because Excel has such a different purpose as a program than Microsoft Word does, this function acts quite differently in Excel than in Word.  An example of when you might use this function in Excel is if you are creating a new spreadsheet that will reference some cells from another spreadsheet--especially if it might reference those cells a few times.  Normally you would use a formula to point back and forth, but that would involve the same switching back and forth that you would do in Word.  When you highlight a cell in Excel and type Ctrl + F3, a window pops up, letting you name this cell.  Either use the default or give it a name you will remember.  You can do this with as many cells as you're going to need to reference in the new spreadsheet.  Then, when you're ready and in the new spreadsheet, hit F3 and choose from the options to either paste all the references you've created or select which one you want.

Happy Spiking!