# Copy, Paste, and Edit Sequence Data

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Sequences can be copied, pasted and edited in FinchTV version 1.2 and above

To copy data, select a single base or group of bases and type cmd C (Mac) or ctrl C (others), or select Copy from either the Edit or Contextual menu. These data can then be pasted into other applications or used to edit single bases in FinchTV (see paste below).

To paste data, first copy a single base, then select another base and type cmd V (Mac) or ctrl V (others), or select Paste from either the Edit or Contextual menu. Paste only works for single base operations.

Editing options include replacing single bases with any IUPAC nucleotide designation, inserting or deleting bases, changing regions of bases to uppercase or lowercase, and replacing strings of bases with X’s or N’s. Between saves all edits can be undone, or redone.

To edit single bases, click the base to edit and type the new base. The new base appears in Bold font (except on Solaris), underlined, and is colored appropriately. Non-ACGT bases are black.

To edit a range of bases, select a group of bases and then select the appropriate options (Convert to Uppercase, Convert to Lowercase, Replace with X’s, Replace with N’s) from either the Edit or Contextual menu. Alternatively, these edits can be made by typing cmd U (Mac) or ctrl U (others), cmd L (Mac) or ctrl L (others), shift-cmd X (Mac) or shift-ctrl X (others), shift-cmd N (Mac) or shift-ctrl N (others), respectively.

To insert a base, click on a single base and type cmd B (Mac) or ctrl B (others), or select Insert Before Base from either the Edit or Contextual menu. Inserted bases are indicated in underlined bold font (except Solaris), underlined, and also includes a dot above the new base. If quality values are displayed, inserting a base adds a quality value (Q10) to the inserted base position. New bases are always inserted halfway between before the selected base and the previous base.

To delete a base, click on a single base and type cmd X (Mac) or ctrl X (others), or type backspace or delete, or select Delete Base from either the Edit or Contextual menu. A deleted base is indicated by an “_” (underscore) character. If quality values are displayed, deleting a base does not remove its corresponding quality value from the view. Rather, the quality value is deleted when the file is saved.

If the file has not been saved, an unlimited number of edits can be undone or redone.

To undo edits, type cmd Z (Mac) or ctrl Z (others), or select Edit > Undo from the menu.

To redo undone edits, type cmd Y (Mac) or ctrl Y (others), or select Edit > Redo from the menu.

When a file is edited, saved, closed, and then reopened, previous edits are displayed as standard text.

A special note about SCF files. When ACGT-bases are changed to other IUPAC codes (b, c, d, h, k, m, n, r, s, v, w, or y), the quality values associated with those positions cannot be stored in the SCF format and will be lost if the file is saved in SCF format.

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