Cut, (Copy, ) & Paste are the terms for copying text from one part of your script to another. The way this works is you select a section of text. You then select Edit, Cut or Edit, Copy to cut or copy the text to a hidden clipboard. Copy makes a copy while cut copies it over and then deletes it from the script.
You then place the caret where you want to insert the text you copied to the clipboard and select Edit, Paste. The text will then be copied into the new location. And the text is also still in the clipboard so you can paste multiple times.
The clipboard is provided by Windows. All programs see the same clipboard. This allows programs to copy text to each other. One program can cut or copy the text in and the other then uses that text to paste.
The clipboard can only hold one block of data (text) at a time so what ever was cut or copied into the clipboard last from any program is what will be pasted in Screen Writer Studio.
The clipboard lets program place data in it in various formats. Each program also only understands certain formats when pasting from the clipboard. For example, if a picture is copied into the clipboard, Screen Writer Studio has no way of understanding a picture and therefore cannot paste it.
Every time you cut or copy text, Screen Writer Studio places the selected text into the clipboard in 3 formats. The first is text format. This is just the text with a <CR> at the end of each paragraph. There are no margins, line spacing, or other formatting information. For any data that is text, every Windows program can both read and write this format to/from the clipboard.
The second is RTF format. This is similar to the Rich Text File format. This includes full formatting information for each paragraph. However, while a paragraph’s margins are known, it may not include information about what paragraph style the reading program should put it in. For example, both the Scene and Action paragraphs have identical paragraph formatting settings. Every Windows word processor, including the screen-writing programs, support this format. (Note: if you need to read in a RTF file, you can open it in a word processor, copy it all in the word processor, and paste it in Screen Writer Studio. However, you will get better results if you open the file directly as you will be able to map paragraph formats to paragraph styles.)
The third is Screen Writer Studio format. This format is understood by Screen Writer Studio only. It has all information Screen Writer Studio needs to copy the information exactly. However, no other program can place information in the clipboard in this format and no other program can read it.
When Screen Writer Studio pastes from the clipboard, it will use Screen Writer Studio format if it’s available. If not, it will use the RTF format. If that is not available, it will use the text format. You can also use the Edit, Paste Special to force which format is used.
If you are ever curious about what clipboard formats are present, select Edit, Paste Special and the formats presently in the clipboard are the formats not grayed out.