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3.5 Copy, cut, and paste

The copy functions work on rectangular regions of cells. You can paste the copies into non-SES buffers to export the print text.

M-w

[copy]

[C-insert]

Copy the highlighted cells to kill ring and primary clipboard (kill-ring-save).

[drag-mouse-1]

Mark a region and copy it to kill ring and primary clipboard (mouse-set-region).

[M-drag-mouse-1]

Mark a region and copy it to kill ring and secondary clipboard (mouse-set-secondary).

C-w

[cut]

[S-delete]

The cut functions do not actually delete rows or columns—they copy and then clear (ses-kill-override).

C-y

[S-insert]

Paste from kill ring (yank). The paste functions behave differently depending on the format of the text being inserted:

• When pasting cells that were cut from a SES buffer, the print text is ignored and only the attached formula and printer are inserted; cell references in the formula are relocated unless you use C-u.
• The pasted text overwrites a rectangle of cells whose top left corner is the current cell. If part of the rectangle is beyond the edges of the spreadsheet, you must confirm the increase in spreadsheet size.
• Non-SES text is usually inserted as a replacement formula for the current cell. If the formula would be a symbol, it’s treated as a string unless you use C-u. Pasted formulas with syntax errors are always treated as strings.

[paste]

Paste from primary clipboard or kill ring (clipboard-yank).

[mouse-2]

Set point and paste from primary clipboard (mouse-yank-at-click).

[M-mouse-2]

Set point and paste from secondary clipboard (mouse-yank-secondary).

M-y

Immediately after a paste, you can replace the text with a preceding element from the kill ring (ses-yank-pop). Unlike the standard Emacs yank-pop, the SES version uses undo to delete the old yank. This doesn’t make any difference?