Paste special is a very good tool to have for a variety of reasons. Let’s cover the most common use cases:
Paste Values
Here we have a table with days worked at Company X, sales per employee, and a calculated field with Sales per day. Column D is calculated with an easy formula of dividing Column C by Column B. Easy, right? But what if our table has thousands of rows with formulas far more complicated?
By leaving in formulas that have already yielded their desired result, we risk slowing down Excel. Also, if you want to paste these values into another sheet or workbook, Excel will still try to calculate “=C2/B2” on the new workbook, when you only want to paste the result. Paste Values to the rescue.
Steps:
- Select Column D.
- Press “control + c” to copy
- Select the top cell you’re going to replace (D2 in our case)
- Control + Alt + V to bring up Paste Special
- Press “V” on your keyboard to select the Values radio button.
- Click OK
As you can see, the cells no longer have a formula in them, but only the resulting Value of that formula.
Paste Special – Transpose
Transpose is used when you want to flip data on its axis.
Let’s say you wanted to take the headers from row 1 above and list them in a new column.
In the picture above, I did the following:
- Copy all of row 1
- Click cell I1
- Paste special
- Transpose
Everything is now flipped vertically.
But that’s not all. Transpose can also flip multiple rows into columns and vice versa.
In the image above I’ve selected 5 rows, copied them, and transposed it on H1. The use cases for Transpose are often very specific and it may be a feature that you do not use as often as some of the others, but when you really need it, it’s a fantastic tool.
