Getting rid of unwanted opaque text background

[Scott Ribe]

This is MS Word 2004, with latest updates. I have a quite simple template.
When I open it and type into it, text background is transparent. When I put
a gray watermark behind the text it looks as I expect. When I put fields in
the text, they are on a gray background (I have set "Field Shading" to
"Always"). This is all as I want it to be.

The problem is, that I have an obsolete program in Classic, and when I copy
& paste from it into Word, the text has an opaque white background. So the
watermark doesn't show up so well because too much of it is blocked out. And
fields always have a white background. I have poked around by converting the
Word document to RTF, and I see the commands setting the text background.

But I can't figure out where in Word to set this. Nothing in the formatting
palette, nothing in the format menu... I have workarounds available, but I
feel like I must be missing something in Word itself.

 

[John McGhie [MVP - Word and Word Macintosh]]

Hi Scott:

Use Edit>Paste Special>Text Only to paste the text in without formatting.

That should fix it for you.

Cheers

This is MS Word 2004, with latest updates. I have a quite simple template.
When I open it and type into it, text background is transparent. When I put
a gray watermark behind the text it looks as I expect. When I put fields in
the text, they are on a gray background (I have set "Field Shading" to
"Always"). This is all as I want it to be.

The problem is, that I have an obsolete program in Classic, and when I copy
& paste from it into Word, the text has an opaque white background. So the
watermark doesn't show up so well because too much of it is blocked out. And
fields always have a white background. I have poked around by converting the
Word document to RTF, and I see the commands setting the text background.

But I can't figure out where in Word to set this. Nothing in the formatting
palette, nothing in the format menu... I have workarounds available, but I
feel like I must be missing something in Word itself.

--

Please reply to the newsgroup to maintain the thread. Please do not email
me unless I ask you to.

John McGhie <[email protected]>
Microsoft MVP, Word and Word for Macintosh. Business Analyst, Consultant
Technical Writer.
Sydney, Australia +61 (0) 4 1209 1410

 

[Scott Ribe]

Well, I had forgotten about "Paste Special". There's not too much
formatting--one of my workarounds was to copy & paste through BBEdit to get
plain text. The other one is to write code--the source is 4D Write and I can
modify the app to do my own conversion to RTF and put that on the clipboard
if I have to.

 

[Elliott Roper]

Well, I had forgotten about "Paste Special". There's not too much
formatting--one of my workarounds was to copy & paste through BBEdit to get
plain text. The other one is to write code--the source is 4D Write and I can
modify the app to do my own conversion to RTF and put that on the clipboard
if I have to.

Heh!
Sounds like I''m teaching granny to suck eggs.
I guess you are on your way.