Formatting Problems. HELP!

In my Word 2007 settings, there are options to keep original formatting, use current doc formatting, or strip it altogether when pasting from another doc.

What version of Word are you using?

In Word 2003, the default is to retain the format of the source material. If I want it stripped away to make it match that of the receiving document, I need to use Paste Special.

Saving the format as default causes other problems, mainly with copying text from websites, so it's entirely possible the default now leans the other way.

Maryn, who'll help if she can

Nah, we'll walk you through it so you don't need the extra step.

First open both the documents, the one you're copying from and the one you're copying to. I'm going to call them From and To.

Select the text in From which you want to copy. (For experimentation and learning purposes, pick just a paragraph or two.)

Press Ctrl-C to place it on the computer's clipboard.

Switch to the To document. Position the cursor where you want the text to be pasted.

Click on Edit in your toolbar, then from its drop-down menu, click on Paste Special, or press Alt and the letter s at the same time. (You will get the same result.)

Now the moment of truth! If you click on Unformatted Text or Unformatted Unicode Text, this removes everything from the text at From you want to paste into To--its font and size, tabs or indents, color, bold or italic, sub or superscripts. And some of that is what you want to keep but are losing. Instead, the From text you paste adopts the font, color, tabs, etc. of the To document which are in effect where the cursor is positioned.

Instead, from Paste Special, select HTML Format. This posts whatever is on your computer clipboard with its format intact, from bold to tabs to color.

Voila!

Maryn, abruptly French

How odd. There are different editions of Word 2003? Mine came packaged with Windows XP Pro. Perhaps you get a slightly different product with XP Home. Or maybe there's bad mojo risin'...

What options are offered on Paste Special for you? My list is:

Microsoft Office Word Document Object (whatever that is)
Formatted Text (RTF)
Unformatted Text
HTML Format
Unformatted Unicode Text

Sometimes in addition to that list I also have:
Picture (Windows Metafile)
Picture (Enhanced Metafile)

Hoping not to insult, have you tried the Help menu for the version of Word installed on the computer?

Maryn, a.k.a. Captain Obvious

Did you recently install something? I see a few forum threads around The Web on this, and a few were fixed by uninstalling PDF creator software.

Here's one example.

Wil,

I always stripped away all of the formatting for queries. Always. It can go haywire in other people's mail readers.

Just use plain text, no itallics or indents, etc. And just manually add a blank line between paragraphs.

If you copy the first 10 pages into a new document, and strip the formatting and reformat manually, then they will be ready for all your queries.

~suki