Clipboard functions

Principle
You can cut or copy the selected parts of your project and paste them using the clipboard. Thus you can copy texts and fields or graphic elements from one picture into another, for example.

Preparating new projects
Before you start to copy objects from an existing project you must make the following global settings for the new project. In this way you ensure no data is lost due to different settings when copying.

• If possible, select the same target device.
• Adjust the name and the PLC protocol to match that of the source project.
• Use the fonts of the source project.

Procedures
There are several ways to paste objects from the clipboard into the target project. The Clipboard settings are to be found in the menu under Extras > Options > Clipboard :

• Copy/Insert name
  You can indicate here whether you wish to add a general suffix when copying.
• Copy/Insert settings
  It is possible to specify which objects are to be copied for each page.
• Copy/Insert options
  Here you select whether existing objects should be replaced or whether they are always created as new objects.

Note
When pasting, SPSPlusWIN always checks the reusability of already existing objects for subordinate objects (e.g. limit value variable of a copied variable). If the target project already includes an object with the same name, the object to be inserted may be renamed. This object is provided with the next free name available within the target project.

Example:
The variable Analog_Variable_4 is renamed Analog_Variable _11 provided that the variables Analog_Variable _1 to Analog_Variable _10 already exist in the target project.

What can be copied?
The following can be copied using the clipboard:

• All objects listed in the project window, e.g. images, text lists, variables etc.
• Objects from pages (diagrams, fields, charts etc.) in the image editor.
• Messages and objects from messages (message text, fields, functions etc.).

The object attributes and all referenced objects are copied together with the objects. Any peculiarities occurring when copying are displayed in the output window under Output. This contains information such as which objects were not copied or re-named.

Particularity for images
If the object to be copied references an image which does not exist in the target project, the subordinate image is not copied but an empty, reusable dummy image is created as placeholder instead. In this way, you avoid copying the entire source project by mistake together with the start image.

What cannot be copied?
At present, the following objects cannot be copied:

• Recipes
• Print protocols
• Global allocation of the function keys
• Font sets
• For multi-language projects, only the languages used in the target project are considered. New languages are not created