Frequently Asked Questions - formatting

Anyone who has spent any time writing documents in Microsoft Word has used the copy and paste feature that is available with most Windows applications that allows you to copy text from one program and paste it into another. But most of the time when you copy text its not in the same format as the text in your Word document.

So you may have noticed that when you paste text into your Word document from other documents or web pages it tends to take the formatting with it. Then you have to go back and change the newly pasted text to match the formatting of the rest of your document.

To get around this annoyance all you need to do is use the Paste Special function. For Word 2007 and up click on the Paste ribbon item under the Office Orb or Home tab. Then you will pick Unformatted Text. What this will do is apply the formatting of your existing text in your document to the text that you are pasting. Or you can right click where you want to paste in the text and choose the keep text only button (depending on your version of Word).

Another way to do this is to just paste the text into your document, highlight it and then click on the Clear Formatting icon on the toolbar to have it remove any formatting from the selected text.