Using the Clipboard

Prerequisites

You can transfer the contents of fields onto the clipboard of your operating system and then paste them into other fields of the SAP System or into other applications. To do this, you use the Clipboard functions.

There is a difference between the functions described here and similar functions you may sometimes find in the Edit menu. The Clipboard functions, though limited, work for the clipboard of your windowing environment, which means you can use them to move or copy contents between the SAP System and other applications. The functions in the Edit menu, though more extensive, only work within the SAP System.

Procedure

1. To select a field or the text you want to copy or move, click and drag the cursor over the desired text. The selected text is highlighted.
1. To remove the information from an input field and place it onto the clipboard of your operating system, choose Cut (
CTRL+X) The field is now blank.
2. To copy the selected information onto the clipboard, choose Copy (
CTRL+C) Data remains in the field.
2. To paste the text, position the cursor where you want the information and then choose Paste (
CTRL+V). The text is pasted at the current cursor position.

The transferred data remains in the clipboard until you use Cut or Copy again to move or copy new texts onto the clipboard. You can insert the texts into fields on another SAP screen or an external application.

To copy the data from several fields or different field types of the screen onto the clipboard, you must turn on the selection mode:

1. Select Clipboard
® Mark (CTRL+Y) in the Layout menu. The pointer changes into a crosshair cursor.
2. Click in one corner of the area you want to copy, hold the mouse button down and drag the cursor to the diagonally opposite corner (for example, from top left to bottom right). The system displays a rectangle to indicate the selected area.
3. Release the mouse button when the rectangle covers the entire text you want to copy.
4. Select Copy (
CTRL+C) or Cut (CTRL+X). The selected text is copied onto the clipboard. When you choose Cut, the selected texts are deleted from the input fields.

The clipboard now holds all the information from the fields you have selected, including the field names and short descriptions. For this reason, you usually cannot insert the contents of the clipboard in the current screen. This feature is primarily intended for copying SAP information and pasting it into an external program, such as Microsoft Word.