Cut/paste and preserve

Are there any setting you can change such that when you cut and paste it will preserve attributes?

I am updating an electric system. A lot of OH has been rebuilt to UG. It would be great to simply be able to cut and paste into the UG layer and preserve substation, feeder, phase etc.

What I have been doing is copy/paste (into the appropriate subtype) and then reselect and delete the old.