Tip of the month - what a drag!

Drag and drop has long been one of the central principles of Windows file management but here are a few uses of the drag function you may not have encountered before.

The following tips apply to various versions of Windows although some features may not be available in Windows 95. (Then again, it may be time to upgrade that PC)

Right-drag

If you drag an item by holding down the right mouse button, you will be provided with a range of options when you release the button. This can be used in Windows Explorer to provide a choice between copying and moving files or in Office applications where you can access a range of different drag options through the right mouse button. For example, if you drag a selection of cells in Excel using the right mouse button, these are the options which will be presented to you (see right):

Copying between applications

Did you know you can use your mouse to drag items from one application to another?

In the example below, a Word window has been opened next to an Excel Window (you’ll need to resize the two application windows so they appear side by side). Once you have done this, you can literally drag cells from the Excel worksheet into the Word document.

A straight-forward drag 'moves' the cells from one application to another but you can also 'copy' the cells by holding down the Control key at the same time.

Here is a screen shot before the cells have been control-dragged...