The Edit Menu

The edit menu can house lots of commands, but it almost always features Cut, Copy, and Paste, the three commands you'll use most often when you're editing a document. They let you move a part (or all) of your document from one place to another—either within the same document or to another document altogether. Copy leaves the information where it is and lets you Paste a copy of it somewhere else, whereas Cut deletes it from its original location before letting you Paste it somewhere else. Cut is the first part of moving something, and copy is the first part of copying it. Paste is the second part of both.

Using Cut and Paste to Move Data Between Documents Remember this little trick the next time you need to get a graphic, for example, into a word-processing program. Instead of trying to open the file in your word processor, just open the original file, select the part you want to copy, and paste it into a word processing file. You can practice this now: Use the Start menu to open the Paint Application (it's in the Accessories area). Paint something and then select it using the selection tool in the upper right corner. Copy part or all of your painting into the Clipboard. (Use the Copy command in the Edit menu or the Copy button on the toolbar.) Open WordPad (also in the Accessories area). Click in the WordPad window and choose the Paste command (from the Edit menu or the toolbar) to paste the picture into your WordPad document.