asked on

Copy only visible content

I have question regarding copying a value from excel cell. I know how to paste value or formula or formatting and so from one excel cell to another cell, that is not issue.

I want to know why I am getting different results if I highlight only cell content : text or number(I do not have formula in cell) and copy and paste it to other location(it could be notepad) or if I click on cell( select it) and then do copy and paste it.
I have issue that sometimes when I select - click on cell( not just highlighting content in) and copy it to other application not excel I got different results.

Is it possible that clicking on cell instead of selecting(highlighting)text or particular number in the cell I could copy some extra not visible values from that cell( e.g. line return I got this when I copy cell value in notepad ) or additional space after the end of text or end of number in the cell .

How to avoid it? I what to copy only visible content of cell? Highlighting content every time then coping is time consuming. Is there other way to do that and to be sure that I copy only visible content of cell (letters of numbers no line return)?

Tom Farrar

So if I understand you only want to copy a portion of a cell (in this instance you are talking about cells with line breaks caused by Alt/Return on the keypad, correct?

Rob Henson

In Excel you can expand the size of the formula bar, hover the cursor over the bottom edge of the formula bar and click and drag it down. This will then show if there are additional lines of data in the cell.

Selecting the cell and doing copy will copy the entire contents, going into the cell and selecting the contents will only copy what is selected so if you can't initially see it all you won't select it all.

Taras

ASKER

Rob if you have in excel cell e.g. abcd and you click on the cell and copy it in notepad you will get abcd and cursor will be not at the end beside "d" but on next line. It means it added line brake. You can not see in formula bar nothing you see only abcd and it looks ok. However if you highlight abcd and do copy you it in notepad cursor is at the end of abcd.

Tom Farrar

Well my suggestion is before you copy the cell or highlight the cell data you eliminate any line breaks in the column you are working with. This short video shows three ways to easily do that.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kFW8HmIZrH4

Rob Henson

@Tom - he doesn't have line breaks in his data, when you copy a cell in Excel and then paste into Notepad the paste also puts a line break after the pasted text, same happens when pasting into Word so can't even use Word as an interim step

Tom Farrar

Thanks, Rob. Sounds like a problem we all have. Paste special does the same thing?

Tom Farrar

If you paste (a cell copy) as unformatted text in Word it appears not create a line return. May not be the best way, but..

Rob Henson

Notepad doesn't have a paste special option.

But on testing it seems it is an issue with Notepad.

Copy from Excel and do a paste special "Unformatted text" into Word does not give the extra line break. So I thought lets copy the result from Word and paste into Notepad, you get the line break.

ASKER CERTIFIED SOLUTION

Rob Henson

membership

This solution is only available to members.

To access this solution, you must be a member of Experts Exchange.

Start Free Trial

Taras

ASKER

That is to much steps and complicated, If you need to do that every time when you doing excel cell copy it is faster to highlight content and do ctrl C and past it in other application. I was thinking that is possible to do some fast shortcut keys but obviously excel do not provide it. Anyway thank you both for help.