10 Ways to Use Paste Special in Excel

Formatted Text

You want the text to retain the formatting of the text from the other program or web page.

Unformatted Text

You want the text to take on the formatting of the Office program you're pasting to.

Microsoft Office Drawing Object

You want the contents of the Clipboard to appear as a Microsoft Office drawing object.

Picture (GIF)

You want the contents of the Clipboard to appear as a Graphics Interchange Format (GIF) picture.

The GIF file format is limited to 256 colors, and is therefore most effective for scanned images, such as illustrations, and less effective for color photographs. GIF is also a good file format for line drawings, black and white images, small text that is only a few pixels high, and animation.

Picture (JPEG)

You want the contents of the Clipboard to appear as a Joint Photographic Experts Group (JPEG) picture.

The JPEG file format supports 16 million colors and is best suited for photographs and complex graphics.

Picture (PNG)

You want the contents of the Clipboard to appear as a Portable Network Graphics (PNG) picture.

The PNG file format is similar to GIF but it provides better color support. It compresses solid areas of color while preserving sharp detail, such as the detail in line art, logos, or illustrations with text.

You can save, restore, and re-save a PNG image without degrading its quality. Unlike GIF files, PNG does not support animation, and some older web browsers and applications do not support PNG.

Picture (Windows Metafile)

You want the contents of the Clipboard to appear as a Windows Metafile Format (WMF) picture.

You can save a picture as a 16-bit graphic (for use with Windows 3.x and later).

Picture (Enhanced Metafile)

You want the contents of the Clipboard to appear as an Enhanced Metafile (EMF) format.

You can save a picture as a 32-bit graphic, which supports more sophisticated graphics functions.

Device Independent Bitmap

You want the contents of the Clipboard to appear as a Device Independent Bitmap (DIB), such as a slide acting as a graphic for use on web pages.

A DIB is a representation (that consists of rows and columns of dots) of a graphics image in computer memory. The value of each dot (filled in or not) is stored in one or more bits of data.

Bitmap

You want the contents of the Clipboard to appear as a bitmap.

The Microsoft Windows BMP format can display millions of colors. Because it is supported by several programs, it is an extremely practical file format to use when you are providing an image to someone who may not have the program in which you created the image.