Excel Copy and Paste Guidelines and Best Practices

Consider these guidelines and best practices while copuying and pasting in Excel.

In data forms, after copying a cell, only a single paste is allowed. Pasting into subsequent cells is not supported.

Workaround: After pasting the cell once, you must copy the cell again in order to paste it into another cell.
In forms or ad hoc grids with hidden columns, you will have unexpected results if you attempt to copy two or more consecutive cells from a range containing visible and hidden cells and paste them into a range of visible and hidden cells. The copied cells will be pasted to both the visible and hidden cells. This is Excel behavior.

For example, suppose you are working with the following Year hierarchy on a form:
```
Year
   Quarter
      Month
```
On the form, the Quarter members are collapsed, so that the only visible members are Year and Month. Copy the values from one of the rows under the four Quarter cells, and paste them onto another row in another grid or form under Quarter, where the Quarter members are also collapsed.

You may expect to see each of the four Quarter values pasted into the same position as on the previous sheet, but this is not the case. The cells will paste into the first visible cell and into the next three hidden cells (for example, Jan, Feb, Mar).

Consider also that some Planning forms may also have spreading enabled, which can affect how the values are updated in the cells.
Office Copy and Paste is not supported for copying and pasting Oracle Smart View for Office objects—such as charts, tables, sliders, or the POV—between slides, pages, and sheets. Smart View does not always handle the invalid copy gracefully. For example, in PowerPoint, if a Smart View chart is copied using Office Copy and Paste, an error message is displayed upon Refresh. Follow these best practices:
- Do not use Office Copy and Paste to copy Smart View reporting objects. Instead, use Smart View Copy and Paste.
- Do not copy and paste charts inserted using the Insert Chart command in PowerPoint. This applies to both Office Copy and Paste and Smart View Copy and Paste.
Using the copy and paste functionality in Excel and then performing any Smart View operation (such as Refresh, Zoom In, or Submit) causes Smart View to stop responding in the following cases:
- Copying a column to multiple columns if the column copied contains a Smart List or the database to which you’re connected supports duplicate member names
- Copying one Smart List cell to multiple cells
  
  Copying one member cell to multiple cells if the database to which you’re connected supports duplicate member names
To work around this, consider the following:
- While designing the ad hoc grid and copying and pasting columns or cells, ensure that the Member Name Display option is set to "Distinct Member Name Only." The Member Name Display option is in the Member Options tab of the Options dialog box.
- After pasting, save the workbook and reopen it, then perform the refresh.
Microsoft Fix for Office 2016:

The copy and paste cases noted above work as expected in Office 2016 if you have applied the update described in the Microsoft Knowledge Base (KB) article, "August 9, 2016, update for Excel 2016 (KB3115438)":

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/3115438/august-9--2016--update-for-excel-2016-kb3115438