Do you often find yourself frustrated that content you just copied and pasted didn’t turn out the way you expected? With the new Live Preview in Office 2010, you can preview how copied content will look when it’s pasted even between Office applications.

Not every paste preview option will be available in every circumstance. The available options will be based on the applications being used and what content is copied.

Copy your content like normal by right-clicking and selecting Copy, pressing Crtl + C, or selecting Copy from the Home tab.

Next, select your location to paste the content. Now you can access the Paste Preview buttons either by selecting the Paste dropdown list from the Home tab…

…Or by right-clicking. As you hover your cursor over each of the Paste Options buttons, you will see a preview of what it will look like if you paste using that option. Click the corresponding button when you find the paste option you like.

The “Paste” will paste all the content and formatting as you can see below.

Values will paste values only, no formatting.

Formatting will paste only the formatting, no values.

Hover over Paste Special to reveal any additional paste options.

The process is similar in other Office applications. As you can see in the Word document below, Keep Text Only will paste the text, but not the orange color format from the original text.

Even after you’ve pasted, there is still time to change your mind. After you paste content you’ll see a Paste Option button near your content. If you don’t, you can pull it up by pressing the Ctrl key.

Note: This is also available after using Ctrl + V to paste.

Click to enable the dropdown and select one of the available options.

Using Live Paste Preview between multiple applications is just as easy. If we preview pasting the content from our Word document into PowerPoint by using the Keep Source Formatting option, we’ll see that the outcome looks awful.

Selecting the Use Destination Theme will merge the text into the theme of the PowerPoint document and looks a lot better on our slide.

Live Paste Preview is a nice addition to Office 2010 and is sure to save time spent undoing the unexpected consequences of pasting content.

Looking for more Office 2010 tips? Check out some of our other Office 2010 posts like how to create a customized tab on the Office 2010 ribbon, and how to use the streamlined printing features in Office 2010.