Hey Jack:
If the "expert" thought you had uncovered a new bug, then I would like to
know what he was "expert" in: It certainly wasn't Mac Word
We have known about that one for a couple of years. Part of the problem is
that Word 2004 can actually make a "better" copy than Word X could. It is
seeing more of the information coming from the clipboard, and it doesn't
know what to do with some of it.
And part of the problem is the complexity involved in the average web page
these days. By the time you have the three or four components of the web
page, 20-odd graphic elements, two or three style-sheets and literally the
same number of items from anything up to 20 different advertising servers
and their dozens of popups, the computing problem domain is growing
exponentially. There are a very large number of states changing, and
changing very rapidly.
This is not the kind of thing a word-processor does for a living. Yeah,
you're right, it shouldn't beach-ball. But don't expect it to do this stuff
"well". To use a simplistic example, it's like taking a wall from an
aluminium shed and trying to nail it into place in a brick house. Radically
different kind of structure in each, they will never fit well together, and
often will fall down
You are on the right track with your paste as unformatted text. The
formatting from a web page is useless to you anyway: the documents have
radically different formats, better to discard it and start again.
Beachballing when you paste in plain text is a different problem. That
shows that the internal structure of your Word document is broken, causing
Word to hang when it tries to read it.
The only thing I can recommend there is to turn your non-printing characters
on while editing, so you can see what you are doing and don't break the
document. The paragraph mark is one of the most complex structures in a
Word document: it contains all of the formatting for the paragraph. As many
as 1200 different bits of information.
Learn to select and insert precisely, so that you are not inserting stuff
into the middle of other objects, or chopping objects out of the middle of
things. The more non-printing characters you turn on, the more you can see,
and the fewer manglings you will make
Saving out of Safari into TextEdit is goodness. TextEdit discards all the
complex structures on the way in. If you then copy from TextEdit to Word,
most of the complex stuff like Java and form fields gets left behind before
it can get Word into trouble.
And don't forget the keyboard! Typing your own text is goodness. As a
freelance writer, you know that "fair use" allows you to copy only about 250
Words
After that, you have to write your own version anyway, or you get
to sit in a cell where Word crashes will be the least of your worries
Cheers
My research often requires me to copy information out of Web pages.
Used to work just fine using Safari under Panther with Word X for Mac
on a G4. But after upgrading to Tiger and Word 2004 on my brand new
17" Intel iMac with upgraded processor/memory, almost every time I try
to copy a Web page with Safari and paste it into a Word 2004 document,
I get the spinning beach ball that never quits. That, of
course, ,means I eventually have to Force Quit out of Word and loses
all the research since the last Save.
I've called Microsoft Tech support several times regarding this, and
when the last expert recreated the problem using an Intel Mac he said
it we had discovered a new bug in Word 2004.
I have since learned how to Paste Special and choose Unformatted Text.
But even that occaisionally beach balls my Word.
I could really use some help with this since my freelance writing
depends on Web research.
--
Don't wait for your answer, click here:
http://www.word.mvps.org/
Please reply in the group. Please do NOT email me unless I ask you to.
John McGhie, Consultant Technical Writer
McGhie Information Engineering Pty Ltd
http://jgmcghie.fastmail.com.au/
Sydney, Australia. S33°53'34.20 E151°14'54.50
+61 4 1209 1410, mailto:
[email protected]