Paul, unfortunately, pasting "text only" does not seem to work. When I first
paste the text, it is placed into the Word document with the original
document's font and with single-spaced lines, each ending with a paragraph
mark. If I then click the clipboard icon (which is probably the equivalent of
the glue icon in the version of Word that you are using) and select "Keep
Text Only", the font changes to whatever I am using in Word, and each of
those single-line "paragraphs" now takes the settings that I am using for
paragraph spacing. In other words, "Keep Text Only" pastes the text without
its original formatting, but that text includes the paragraph breaks that
were apparently placed at the end of each line in the clipboard.
Jay, thanks for the link to the "Cleaning Up Pasted Text" article on Suzanne
Barnhill's MVPS page. The article outlines two approaches ("Using Auto
Format" and "Using Find and Replace"):
In "Using Auto Format" the article says:
"...In Word 2007, find this tab at Office Button | Word Options | Proofing:
AutoCorrect Options. No matter what other AutoFormat options you have enabled
here, when you select a block of text with a paragraph break at the end of
each full line, AutoFormat will delete all the paragraph breaks but the last."
Following those instructions, I see that all boxes are checked in the
AutoFormat tab. Most of the boxes are checked in the AutoFormat As You Type
tab are also checked, though none of those seem relevant to the the problem
at hand. So, I close the menu, go back to my text, and select a few
paragraphs. But now what? Is Barnhill saying that just selecting paragraphs
triggers Auto Formatting? Apparently not, because nothing happens. On the
other hand, I cannot find any Auto Format command, so I move on to Barnhill's
second approach.
"Using Find and Replace"
Barnhill's advice (to put ^l^l into the "Find what" box) does not work,
which doesn't surprise me, because there are no line breaks (^l) to be found.
Remember, they have all been converted to paragraph breaks. However I was
able to get what I want by modifying her approach, as follows:
FIRST PASS:
1. Press Ctrl+H to open the Replace dialog.
2. In the “Find what†box, type ^p^p (which finds the two consecutive
paragraph breaks that occur in those places where I actually want a paragraph
break).
3. In the “Replace with†box, type **EOP** (an arbitrary string not found
anywhere else in the document).
4. Click Replace All. I now have a paragraph break at the end of each true
paragraph.
SECOND PASS (the Replace dialog is still open):
1. In the “Find what†box, type ^p (which finds all of the unwanted
paragraph breaks).
2. In the “Replace with†box, type a space.
3. Click Replace All.
THIRD PASS (the Replace dialog is still open):
1. In the “Find what†box, type **EOP** (the arbitrary string I used in
Pass 1, to mark all of the paragraph breaks I want to keep).
2. In the “Replace with†box, type ^p (a paragraph break).
3. Click Replace All.
4. Click Close to close the Replace dialog box.
We are done. It seems like a lot of work to do something that should be
automatic (I can't be the only person who wants to copy text that Internet
Explorer renders as a paragraph into a similar paragraph in Word), but it was
much easier than deleting the paragraph breaks individually.
Thanks,
Peter
Using Vista Ultimate (32 bit) SP 2, Internet Explorer 8 (when browsing a
web page that doesn't like Chrome), and Office Word 2007 SP2
