Paste objects from clipboard

Belongs to

What it does

Allows you to paste objects from the clipboard to one or more selected pages. You can paste them multiple times (with fixed distances or distributed across a distance) as required and indicate where they should be placed.

This Action must be preceded by a "copy/cut "Action (that moves the objects to the clipboard) and a "select" Action (that indicates where the objects should be pasted) in the same Action List.

If there are several "copy/cut" Actions in the Action List, you may want to give each of the clipboards an appropriate name, to make sure the different objects are pasted on the correct pages.

How to proceed?

  1. Create a new Action List.
  2. Add a select Action that select the objects you want to cut/copy-and-paste.
  3. Add a Copy or cut objects to clipboard Action to your Action List and set the attributes (select Cut or Copy and type an appropriate name).
  4. Add a Select pages Action to indicate the pages on which the selection should be pasted (if not yet selected in step 2 -if you added "Select all" in step 2, step 4 is redundant).
  5. Add a Paste objects from clipboard Action and select the name of the clipboard (as entered in step 2). Switch to the different tabs to define the region and the position of the copied objects (see table below).
Note: Action Lists are executed page after page. As a consequence, you can only paste objects to the following pages. For example, if you copy an object that is present on page 3, you can paste it on page 3, 4, 5, ... but not on page 1 or 2.

Tabs

Tabs On this tab, do the following:
Graphics Select the clipboard that contains the objects to be pasted.
Determine whether or not the clipboard should be cleared after the object was pasted. This option determines what happens if there are no objects to be copied (= if the select Action in step 2 of the above procedure results in an empty selection).
  • If checked, the clipboard will be empty, so nothing will be pasted.
  • If cleared, the clipboard will still contain content from the previous page and that content will be pasted.
Attributes

Determine if the objects should be pasted in the foreground or in the background of the document.
Region Determine the region where the objects should be moved to. The region is defined based on the page box of your choice and you can define margins within that page box, by grabbing the offsets from a selected area (using the Grab position button ).

You can also specify a specific area the objects should not be placed in, also based on a page box and with the option to set margins.

Note: The settings on this tab are only used if Move graphic elements is selected on the Position tab. If this is not the case, the original location of the graphic elements is preserved.
Repeat
If the objects should be pasted more than once on a page, change No repeat to:
  • Distribute/Repeat fixed number of graphic elements if you want to determine how often the copied objects should be pasted (e.g. 6 times horizontally, 4 times vertically)
  • Distribute/Repeat graphic elements in region if you want PitStop to fill the region (specified on the Region tab).
If you want PitStop to divide the pasted objects evenly across the defined region, choose "distribute" rather than "repeat". In case of "Distribute graphic elements in region", you can choose the maximum or minimum distance between the pasted objects.

If you choose "repeat", you should define the exact distance between the pasted objects yourself.

The distance can be between the bounding boxes of the pasted objects (choose: Between edges) or from center to center (choose: Between centers).

Note: Remember that you can use Smart Preflight variables to define the distances.
Position If the selected objects should be moved, select Move graphic elements. Indicate how the objects should be positioned relative to the chosen region. Note that, when adding multiple copies, the same corner should be used to position the graphic elements in the region.

Related Action

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