The Problem:
Here's a problem I run into all the time when I'm in either Word 2003 or Word 2004 for the Mac. Let's say I'm surfing the Web and find something really interesting. I select the text I want, copy it, open a Word document, and paste it in. Regardless of whether I use Paste Special or just plain Paste, the formatting is way off on every lineI get all sorts of weird tabs and spaces. This also happens with text from PDF files, Notepad, Text-Edit, and occasionall-y older versions of Word. Why can't I just paste in the text without any formatting?
The Solution:
Choosing Edit » Paste Special and selecting the "Unformatted text" option should give you plain text. If not, on Windows you can try bouncing the text through Notepad first: paste it into Notepad, copy it again, and then paste it into Word. That should get rid of any formatting nasties.
If the text still contains extra spaces and tabs, they're probably included in the PDF or web page for layout purposes. To remove them, either Alt-drag to select the column of unnecessary tabs or spaces or replace whitespace with a single space or tab, depending on the layout.
Apply Sets of Formatting Instantly
The Problem:
It's taking me hours to format all these paragraphs by hand.
The Solution:
You need to use styles.