If you’d like to know what’s so special about Paste Special, watch Excel Video 206. When you want to change the default way that Excel pastes cells, use Paste Special. For example, when Excel sees that cells contain a formula, Excel pastes those cells as a formula. Often I’ll want to paste the results of the formula (the values generated by the formula), not the formula itself. To do that, choose Paste Special and then Paste Values.
Besides Paste Values, most of the other options deal with how data is formatted when you paste; however, there’s one other Paste Special trick I’ll use. If your data is in rows but you want it in columns, or your data is in columns and you want it in rows, try Paste Special and Transpose. If you have one column with 4 cells you want in rows, Transpose is no big deal. If you need to switch hundreds or thousands of cells, Transpose is a life saver.
Rather than using Paste Special to change formats, I generally use a feature called the Format Painter. Format Painter is another great timesaver. We’ll cover that next time.
