We all refer to Internet for creating presentations and research documents, assignments and other documents. Many a times we copy text from other documents or WebPages using CTRL+C and CTRL+V or Copy and Paste options.
There are several issues related to formatting of text when we copy paste such text or rich text or HTML into our word documents. The document looks untidy and stupid if the text fonts, color and sizes etc are different in different sections when we copy paste some text from some webpage or document.
In this article I will share some useful quick and easy tips to make your documents look better and use the copy paste functionality of MS word without damaging your document formatting.
To make it easy to understand, I will take up an example. I have copied some text from an HTML WebPage from my profile page to add it to my CV. The HTML text I copy contains a heading, some paragraph text and a list which is hyperlinked to some web-address.
To copy it, I selected the required text and copied it by right-clicking and clicking Copy as seen below
After copying the text, I go to the MS Word document that I am editing, I right click on the document and hover my mouse over the Paste Options: in the right click-context menu.
On hovering, it shows me 3 options. I will explain all and utility of them.
Keep Source Formatting:
This option retains the formatting from the original document or page, from where you copied it. You should use this options only if you are sure that the formatting of the both original document and the one you are making is same. Or if you are making a new document from scratch and want formatting same as the parent document. This options retains the original formatting as well as the hyperlinks in the copied content. Else see the other options explained below.
This option will merge the formatting of the content of the originally copied text into the formatting of the documents that you are pasting into. This options is recommended when you want to retain the fonts and style of the original page and want to make it fit in your document. This will also retain the original hyperlinks and slightly modify the style of the copied content to match the document you are making.
Keep Text Only:
This option is very useful as it removes all formatting and hyperlinks from the copied content and the formatting/ fonts / color etc all will automatically get removed from the copied content. This is recommended when you just want to copy some text without all formatting.
The above options are visible when you right click on the MS Word after you copy some text or HTML. But if you press CTRL+V to paste, MS Word will show paste options menu inside the document as highlighted below.
When you click on it, you will see the same options as you see in the right click menu with an additional option which says:
Use Destination Styling:
This is a very useful option, It can be safely used. It removed the original formatting and converts the style into the styling of document which you are making. This will also preserve the hyperlinks and list or bullet styling.
Hope this tutorial helped you. See more Tutorials On MS Office.