4.2.2 Copying and Pasting Worksheet Data


Origin provides several options to copy worksheet data from the source worksheet column(s) and paste them to another worksheet.

Contents

Copy and paste worksheet values with the context menus

Copy worksheet values

Select worksheet column(s), right click, select Copy and choose from the following:

Copy copy data with the display precision
Copy Values (full precision) copy data with the full precision
Copy (including label rows) copy both the labels and data(with display precision) of the source column(s)
Copy (formula) copy the formula of the source column(s) only
Copy (label rows) copy the label rows of the source column(s) only
Copy (formula and label rows) copy the formula and label rows only
Copy Transposed transpose the selected cells block while copying
Copy All copy formula, labels and data(with full precision) of the source column(s)


For more information, see FAQ-482: How do I copy data with maximum precision?.

  • Copying and pasting of multiple worksheet cells was changed slightly for Origin 2019b, to be more MS Excel-like: Copying one cell and pasting to m cells, fills m cells. Further, copying n cells and pasting to n*m cells, fills all cells by repeating the copied sequence of n cells. The LabTalk system variable @CPNB was added to switch between old and new behaviors. For information on changing the value of a system variable, see this FAQ.
  • From Origin 2024b, mask stauts (the masked data points' location) can be copied by right-clicking menu Copy: Copy Mask Status.

Paste Worksheet values

If you have copy some worksheet values, Origin provides several options to paste worksheet cell(s) to a new destination.

Select the first cell of the paste destination, right click on it and choose one of the following menu item depending on different purposes.

Paste paste the copied worksheet cell value(s) to the the destination
Paste (Insert) insert the copied worksheet cell(s) before the selected cell(s).
Paste Transpose transpose the copied cells block while pasting
Paste (keep spaces) paste Clipboard content to the worksheet cell(s) without breaking to separate cells. Visible only when @PST = 0. See this FAQ for details.
Paste Link paste the copied cell value(s) as link(s), in which changes in the source cell(s) will trigger auto-update in the destination.

Note that if you only copied one cell, you can paste that cell as link to (continuous) multiple cells by select Edit: Paste Link.

Paste Link Transpose paste the copied cell value(s) as link(s) and transpose the cell block while pasting
  • A linked cell is filled with green background color. If double-click on such cell to enter in-place edit mode, you'll notice the notation that is used. For example, cell://A[6] means this cell is linking to the 6th cell of col(A). Any value change in cell A[6] will trigger updates in all cells that have cell://A[6] automatically.
  • Since Origin 2019, if you have masked any data points in current dataset, copying and pasting the dataset will keep the masking status on these points. Please note, this copying with mask won't support "Paste Transpose", "Paste Link" and "Paste Link Transpose".
    You can use the system variable @CPM to switch back to copying data without keeping the mask status.
  • If you copy some values (text&numeric) outside of Origin, e.g. from MS Excel or Notepad, and then select the first cell of the destination column and Paste, Origin will smartly detects the label row in the copied values and put the text into label rows and the rest of the numeric to data area.
    Selecting Paste (No Label Detection) will turn off auto-detection and put all the copied values into data area.

Copy worksheet values by X-Functions

Besides the straightforward copy methods mentioned above, there are some powerful and flexible X-Functions can help you to copy and paste the worksheet values to another worksheet.

Copy worksheet columns by the X-Function "colcopy"

There is a X-Funtion called colcopy. It allows you to copy column data format or labels, or whether nor not to copy the hidden rows when a filter is applied to the source column.

To open the colcopy dialog, select Worksheet:Copy Columns to... from the main menu,

or

Right click on a column and select Copy Columns to... from the shortcut menu.

If a filter is applied, the right-click Copy menu ignores the hidden rows by default. To change this default behavior to copy all rows, set system variable @iHR=1. Refer to System Variable list for more details.

Copy worksheet cells by the X-Function "Wcopy" or "Wrcopy"

Besides the X-Function colcopy instructed above, Origin have another two X-Function, Wcopy and Wrcopy], to help user to copy data in worksheet cells(especially selected data rows or a specified block of cells) and paste to a new or an existing worksheet.

Wcopy

The X-Function Wcopy can be used to copy specified worksheet rows to a specified worksheet.

You can

Wrcopy

The X-Function Wrcopy can be used to copy a arbitrary range of worksheet cells to another worksheet. You can also specify the destination location of copied range in the output worksheet.

Copy worksheet as HTML/EMF table

Most of the time you just need the worksheet values elsewhere, copy data to another application for example. However, in a few cases, you would want to copy the whole worksheet as an EMF table to a PowerPoint slide, for presentation purpose, or export as text book image.

To copy the whole worksheet as an image

The whole worksheet including data and column headers (LongName, Unit, Comment, etc. if any), and HTML formats such as font style, cell color (including conditional formatting color), banded row, table formats, will be copied. However, Text format (including Unicode text format and OEM text format) will not keep.

To copy selected rows/columns as HTML/EMF table, you can right click on the selection and select Copy Table (HTML, EMF).