Copy/Paste Numbers

Top copy a formula select its cell, tap command-c to copy, select the destination cells, type command-v or choose Edit > Paste and Match Style to paste.

You can also "fill" it into other cell by hovering over an edge of its cell and dragging the yellow dot.

You'll want to pay attention to the Preserve Row and Preserve Column options (which you will see by clicking the downward triangle in an address token in the Formula Editor). If you select on of these a $ "anchor" will be inserted in the formula telling it to keep a reference constant when you copy the formula. Without these anchors the references will change depending on the location of the formula.

I recommend visiting Help > Numbers help in your menu and looking at the Enter formulas and functions section listed in the Table of Contents

SG

Badunit for the win! It's 'Copied' -- I started using it recently as a local replacement to pinboard (not actually as a clipboard manager) and that is in fact the culprit. 'Alfred' - which I do use as a clipboard manager and have for many years without issue - still works perfectly and pastes formulas appropriately. I'll reach out to the devs at Copied and keep it closed for now.

Just to clarify what I was saying, so if I copied the formula itself, for example copy and paste this:

The columns always remained the columns I'm pasting from - they never updated to the columns I'm pasting to (formula always unchanged).

Anyway, this was incredibly helpful, I never considered a clipboard manager the culprit (though seems obvious) -- without your reply and Camelot's validation that this wasn't happening on their end, it got me sorted out. Thank you!

This is how it used to function (and how it *should* function) but it seems to me like after the September 2020 update, this is no longer the copy/paste functionality. Numbers *always* pastes in the values of the cells, not the formulas. And when copying a formula from one cell to another, Numbers always preserves the row and column values, despite whether or not those checkboxes are selected (in other words, Numbers would previously update the formula to include the appropriate new cells). This now never happens.

Copying/pasting is pretty much worthless now, at least in my experience. Perhaps some preference changed somewhere to make this switch on my machine, but this is the new functionality I experience regardless of the file I'm editing - whereas before Numbers would function as expected.

I have never had it do what you are describing. Do you have a third-party clipboard manager or something else that might be getting in the middle of the copy/paste operation?

I am also confused by your two statements that seem contradictory: "Numbers *always* pastes in the values of the cells, not the formulas" vs "when copying a formula from one cell to another, Numbers always preserves the row and column values". Is it pasting the value when you use copy/paste but filling with the unchanged formula when you drag the fill handle? Regardless, I have never seen this happen and I wonder if it is something else installed on your computer that is interfering.

> Numbers *always* pastes in the values of the cells, not the formulas. And

I just tried that here on a spreadsheet I happened to be working on and it did what I expected - it pasted the formula, not the value of the cell I copied. It also maintain the correct absolute/relative references from the original cell.

Therefore something else is amiss if you're seeing only values pasted.

Numbers version 10.2 (7028.0.88)

This isn't so much a Windows vs Mac thing except for Windows uses Ctrl instead while Mac uses Cmd for the copy/paste keyboard shortcuts.