MS Word

Make the Pasted Text Take the Destination's Style

The Problem:

When I add text from another document or web page into a Word document, I want the current style in my Word document to control the style of the pasted text. But instead, I end up with the pasted text being in "Normal (Web)" style or some other style with the wrong font.

The Solution:

In Word 2003 and Word XP, you can click the Paste Options Smart Tag and choose Match Destination Formatting from the pop-up menu to make the pasted text take on the current style.

If you've turned off Smart Tags, or if you're using Word 2000, you're pretty much stuck using Paste Special to paste in the text without any formatting (choose Edit » Paste Special » Unformatted Text), unless you're prepared to create a macro for doing so. If you do a lot of pasting, creating a macro might be worthwhile. When you paste unformatted text, it receives the style currently applied to the paragraph in which you paste it.

Watch Out When Formatting Starts to "Slip"

The Problem:

The formatting in my documents sometimes "slips"for example, I applied boldface to some text, but it changed back to the regular font after I edited another section of the document and then returned to it.

The Solution:

This isn't a fix, but an emergency warning. Formatting slipping like this means that the document is getting corrupted. Save the contents of your document in another format before the corruption gets worse. Choose File » Save As, select Rich Text Format in the "Save as type" drop-down list, and save the document as a rich text file. Close the document, and copy the rich text document to a backup medium. Then create a new Word document, choose Insert » File, insert the contents of the rich text file, and save the document. Check the document all the way through for missing text.