In this worksheet we have a column labelled quantity, a column labelled price, and a column labelled sales (the sales are calculated with a formula, quantity * price).

Suppose that all prices are to be raised by 20%. You can manually enter the new prices, use a formula in a new column to calculate the prices, or you can use paste special.

To use paste special for this situation, we could enter the value 1.2 in cell D1, then right click on cell D1 and choose Copy, giving the cell a flashing white and dark border.

Next, select the column of prices by dragging the thick cross pointer. When the selection is highlighted in blue, click Edit on the menu bar and choose Paste Special from the drop down menu.

This will display the Paste Special dialogue box.

There are a number of options In the Paste Special dialogue box that you can choose from. Since we want to increase the prices in the selected range by 20%, we want to multiply each price in the selected range by 1.2 (the value that we copied). To do this we would click the Multiply radio button, and then click the OK button.

Notice that the prices have been increased by 20%, and Sales have increased as well, taking the new prices into account.

By using paste special, we have not copied the value 1.2 in cell D1 to the selected range. Instead, we have used the value to perform a multiplication operation on the values in the selected range.

Remember, you must copy the value or values that you want to paste, creating a flashing light and dark border around the cell or range, and then select the cell or range that you want to paste to, before invoking the Paste Special dialogue.