Blocks - Operations

Copying and Moving Blocks

You can make a second copy of a marked block of text at a new location in any document. Or you can move a marked block of text to a new location in any document.

Once you have marked the required block of text, proceed as follows:

  1. Position the caret at the cell position in the document to which the block of text is to be copied or moved. This can be almost anywhere in the same column or in any other column of this or another document. It cannot be on any row which overlaps the block other than the top row of the block.
  2. Give the Copy Block or Move Block command
Menu Command Tool Key Cmd-sequence
Blocks Copy block BC
Move block Adj- BM

To move a block of text to the right:

  1. Mark the block.
  2. Position the caret in the cell to which you want the block to be moved. This can be within the marked block.
  3. Give the Move Block command. The block of text will shift to the right.

Blocks can be moved to the left in the same way.

Deleting Blocks

To delete a block of text, first mark the block of text to be deleted, then give the Delete Block command:

Menu Command Tool Key Cmd-sequence
Blocks Delete block BD

Insertion Rules

When you copy, move and delete blocks, PipeDream has some simple rules for deciding whether the block should be inserted into new cells or overwrite existing cells.

Copying and moving blocks

If the target area is completely blank, PipeDream simply overwrites the blank area.

If the target area is not completely blank, PipeDream inserts before the target area as many rows across the whole document as there are in the marked block. These newly inserted rows are then overwritten by the marked block.

Deleting blocks

PipeDream first blanks out the block. Then, if all the other columns in the rows which contained the block are blank, PipeDream deletes all the rows. Move Block works in the same way for the block it deletes.

Transposing Blocks

If you type in some names and addresses like this:

Mr. R.T. Smith.
3, The Drive,
Tonbridge,
Kent.
 
Mr & Mrs. G. Fox
192b High Street
Cambridge,
Cambs.
 
Mr. J. FitzHenry
"RiverView",
Sevenoaks,
Kent.

and then realise that you actually wanted to enter them like this:

Mr. R.T. Smith. 3, The Drive, Tonbridge, Kent.
       
Mr & Mrs. G. Fox 192b High Street Cambridge, Cambs.
     
Mr. J. FitzHenry "RiverView", Sevenoaks, Kent.

all you have to do is mark each name and address like this:

Mr. R.T. Smith. 3, The Drive, Tonbridge, Kent.
 
Mr & Mrs. G. Fox
192b High Street
Cambridge,
Cambs.
 
Mr. J. FitzHenry
"RiverView",
Sevenoaks,
Kent.

and give the Transpose Blocks command:

Menu Command Tool Key Cmd-sequence
Blocks Transpose blocks Adj- BT
For information on See
Alternative methods of copying and moving text

Recovering deleted text
Paste
Copying number cells Replication