Patent ID: 7178098

Claim:
A method, implemented on a computer system, of handling user-defined options during a copy and paste operation or a cut and paste operation within a multi dimensional electronic spreadsheet comprising a plurality of cells identified by a cell address along each dimension, said method comprising the steps of: processing a first user input, wherein the first user input defines one or a plurality of option combinations, each option combination comprising a plurality of options, wherein each option in the plurality of options has an associated identifier and an associated value; accessing, in the computer system, the multidimensional electronic spreadsheet, wherein the multidimensional electronic spreadsheet includes at least one cell that references an identifier of at least one option of the plurality of options; processing a second user input, wherein the second user input selects a first source cell range of the multidimensional electronic spreadsheet and a destination cell range of the multidimensional electronic spreadsheet; processing a third user input identifying an operation to execute, wherein the operation to execute is either a copy and paste operation, or a cut and paste operation; and performing the identified operation, wherein performing the identified operation comprises: analyzing the first source cell range, for each defined option combination, to determine if at least one cell in the first source cell range comprises a reference to one or more options of the plurality of options of the defined option combination; and for each option combination in which the first source cell range has at least one cell that references one or more options of the plurality of options of the defined option combination, performing the following operations: computing a content of each cell within the first source cell range to thereby generate a second source cell range, wherein contents of the at least one cell are computed according to the referenced one or more options of the plurality of options based on a corresponding value associated with the referenced one or more options defined in a current option combination; creating a version instance of the destination cell range in the multidimensional electronic spreadsheet; and copying the second source range of cells into the version instance.