Pasting web text into word looks horrible

[kevs14]

Version: 2004 Operating System: Mac OS X 10.6 (Snow Leopard) Processor: Intel I'm pasting text from this forum into word, then looks horrible, bad formatting, what can I do? I don't remember this happening before.

 

[Patty Winter]

I'm
pasting text from this forum into word, then looks horrible, bad
formatting, what can I do?

You can either choose "Match destination formatting" from the
little menu that appears at the end of your pasted text, or you
can initiate the paste by choosing Paste Special from the Edit
menu and then choosing Unformatted Text. Either way, the pasted
text will take on the same formatting as the text around it.
(Specifically, of the formatting attached to the paragraph mark
after it.)


Patty

 

[kevs14]

Patty,
you text now pastes fine, but from a older reply I got in Excel forum, it looks likes this after I paste from Word:

http://tinypic.com/r/2mgtuti/5

but in the forum it's this:

Excel 2004 DOES have the ability for you to construct a "make this column
into hyperlinks" macro, and Excel 2011 will have too.

But if you think "this" is particle physics, that book will forever remain
closed for you.

In the meantime, we gave you a formula that would do it, but you threw up
your hands and said it was "too hard".

I privately suspect that if you had tried it, you would have found that it
is actually very easy

I can remember when I felt exactly the same as you do about Excel. I used
to say "Excel? That's that application with numbers in it, isn't it?"
Sorry, but Excel *IS* a 'power tool'. We do have to learn to use it. And
it's not that difficult: the hardest step is the 'first' -- deciding to
begin! I know this, because I took it fairly recently myself
-------------------------
Question: why does this paste in so badly?
And you solutions helped initially, but now I've been testing them more, and they are having no effect. thanks!

 

[Patty Winter]

Patty,
you text now pastes fine, but from a older reply I got in Excel forum,
it looks likes this after I paste from Word:

http://tinypic.com/r/2mgtuti/5

Question: why does this paste in so badly?

The text in that image has line breaks, so it cannot properly wrap
to the line lengths you have set in your Word document. I suspect
that my posting looked okay because my lines were shorter than you
have set. Let me do a long line and I'll bet it will encounter the
same problem you see with other people's postings:

Here is a really long line that I'm not going to break manually but just keep typing until I get to the next line and then finally I'll end it.


Does that come out funny if you paste it into Word?

I don't know of any fix other than to replace the return characters
with spaces by using Search and Replace. Let's see if anyone else
has a better idea.

BTW, it appears that the Microsoft website uses soft returns within
paragraphs of forum postings. (I assume from your email address that
that's where you're reading this newsgroup.) The site even converted
my hard returns (which I'm typing manually within the trn newsreader
and the vi editor) into what are soft returns when pasted into Word.
So you may have to search and replace for soft rather than hard returns.
Click the paragraph icon in Word to see which paragraph marks are used
in your pasted text, then search and replace as appropriate.


Patty

 

[John McGhie]

Hi Kevs:

Patty is correct. Some text here is in HTML in "Format = Flowed" which
allows Word to adjust the line lengths automatically to fit.

Other text is in ANSI (Plain Text) with line breaks, which you need to
remove if you want to paste the text into a different column width.

You could create a new message in Entourage, and paste the text into that.

Then from the Edit Menu, select Auto Text Cleanup and choose the Rewrap
Paragraphs option

That converts any text into Format=Flowed so you can paste it wherever you
like.

Cheers

Patty,
you text now pastes fine, but from a older reply I got in Excel forum, it
looks likes this after I paste from Word:

http://tinypic.com/r/2mgtuti/5

but in the forum it's this:

Excel 2004 DOES have the ability for you to construct a "make this column
into hyperlinks" macro, and Excel 2011 will have too.

But if you think "this" is particle physics, that book will forever remain
closed for you.

In the meantime, we gave you a formula that would do it, but you threw up
your hands and said it was "too hard".

I privately suspect that if you had tried it, you would have found that it
is actually very easy

I can remember when I felt exactly the same as you do about Excel. I used
to say "Excel? That's that application with numbers in it, isn't it?"
Sorry, but Excel *IS* a 'power tool'. We do have to learn to use it. And
it's not that difficult: the hardest step is the 'first' -- deciding to
begin! I know this, because I took it fairly recently myself

--

The email below is my business email -- Please do not email me about forum
matters unless I ask you to; or unless you intend to pay!

John McGhie, Microsoft MVP (Word, Mac Word), Consultant Technical Writer,
McGhie Information Engineering Pty Ltd
Sydney, Australia. | Ph: +61 (0)4 1209 1410 | mailto:[email protected]