Paste Special

[JimFinch]

Running Office2003 on WinXPpro. Application requires use of PASTE SPECIAL-VALUES.
Suddenly, for no apparent reason, when PASTE SPECIAL is selected the options box is totally different with only 2 options presented:
1) unicode text,
and
2) text

How do I restore the original options, i.e. the ones that include VALUES, etc.?

Have had no success discussing with other experienced EXCEL users and searching forums such as this one.

Local IT Support suggests reinstalling Office. Is this the only way?
Does this make sense to anyone?

Thanks in advance for any help,
Jim Finch

[humantripod]

Paste is based on the context of whatever it is you are pasting, i.e. whatever is the last thing copied to the Office clipboard. If the last thing copied was from a text-based source then you will only be prsented with text-based options.

For example, open a new spreadsheet in Excel. Highlight a couple of lines of text from this forum page and do CTRL-C to copy to the clipboard. Now try to "Paste Special" into the spreadhseet. You will only get options to paste text.

Now, if you highlight several cells in the spreadhseet and do a "Copy", then when you do a "Paste Special" you should see the dialog box with all of the Excel based options.

So again, it's all about what you are trying to paste that will determine the contect of the "Paste Special" function.

Hope this helps.