Copy and paste formatting problem

[BroCharlieD]

The problem I have is in the text editor. Once a week I get a post from a Pastor who does a commentary on a verse or verses of the Bible. I save his comments in SwordSearcher. I have created a tab and entries under ?Books and Dictionaries? I go through the process of adding an entry and bring up the text editing screen. I then copy the text from the email program, in this case Outlook 2003, and paste it into the SwordSearcher text editor. The default settings for it are Verdana with a size of 5.
Most times when I do the paste the text pastes into the text editor with the majority of the text at the default settings but some parts of it are formatted with different settings, smaller and a different font from the defaults. This is usually text which was italicized or bolded in the original. But not all of the italicized or bolded text.

I then go and highlight the offending text and select the Format function and remove formatting and then re-highlight the text and select the verdana font and the size of 5. Most times nothing changes. Sometimes part of the selected text will change, sometimes the font changes but the size will not. Sometimes if the text were bolded and I want it unbolded I cannot change it. I then select all the incorrect text from then end of the default ?correct? text to the next "correct" text and delete it. Then re copy and paste it again. Usually this solves the immediate problem sometimes it does not and I then paste it into another program such as Word, recopy and paste. This works.

What I am guessing is the SwordSearcher ?remove formatting? selection under the Format button is not removing all of the formatting within the text. How do I make this copy and paste correctly?

 

[Brandon Staggs]

Formatted text copied from the clipboard is subject to the whims of the Windows HTML edit control -- while it usually works well, sometimes there can be problems depending on the original source. My educated guess is that the original material that you are receiving in your emails is heavily formatted with CSS and other things, making it somewhat problematic for a "clean" formatted paste. (I normally see this in material that was written originally in older versions of MS Word, then converted to HTML.)

What I would suggest trying is to paste it as plain text, which will remove all of the formatting before it is added to your user content. You can do this with Ctrl+Shift+V or by selecting Paste As Plain Text on the Edit menu.

The disadvantage is that you will need to go in and add formatting you want, but it could be easier and "cleaner" than a normal paste.

 

[BroCharlieD]

thanks for the quick response. I knew I could do a clean paste but was trying to avoid doing it for the reasons you mentioned. I was hoping for a different solution but alas I do see the problem.

 

[TerriP]

Sometimes when this copy and paste situation comes up I copy first to Word, then format it there with like Arial or Verdana or whatever style font I want to use, change or even just highlight it all and make it whatever size and style font I want, even if it all looks same size and style already, I kind of just re-do everything. Then I copy and paste that, from Word, into SwordSearcher or wherever I want my text to eventually end up. It's an extra step but that's how I clean it up. I suppose you could also use Notepad or something like that instead of Word.