Cut and paste commands described above allow copying and moving selections from one location in a spreadsheet to another, or between different spreadsheets. However, you can also use cut and paste to exchange information between Gnumeric and other applications, using so-called X clipboard which is shared by all graphical applications.
Whenever you cut or copy a selection in Gnumeric, it is placed both in Gnumeric clipboard and in X clipboard. In X clipboard, it is placed as text, with formulas replaced by their values and contents of different cells separated by spaces.
To paste the selection from X clipboard to an application, click with middle mouse button (if you have two button mouse, you can emulate the middle mouse button by pressing left and right buttons simultaneously). Most applications also allow pasting from X clipboard by using keyboard shortcut (usually Ctrl+V) or by choosing Edit ▸ Paste.
To paste a selection from another application to Gnumeric, place this selection in the X clipboard. Usually it is done by just selecting it with the mouse; some applications also allow you to use keyboard shortcut Ctrl+C, or choose Edit ▸ Copy. After this, you can paste it in Gnumeric by using Paste command described above. This command will automatically paste the contents of X clipboard if Gnumeric's own clipboard is empty.
Pasting X clipboard in Gnumeric will automatically launch the Text Import druid which will assist you in importing the plain text contents of X clipboard into the spreadsheet. The Text Import druid is described in Section 9.4 ― Importing Text Files.