Ignore styles while copying between documents

J

jp

I do a community newsletter and receive inputs via Word documents from the
various authors. Compiling the inputs into the newsletter document is very
frustrating.

When I paste the source documents into the newsletter, the font and
paragraph style changes to "Normal" -- best I can tell. I have to reformat
the fonts and paragraphs each time.

I see no benefit to this feature. I would prefer that the pasted paragraph
look as close to the original as possible. If there is a way to have Word do
this now, I sure can't figure it out!

Thanks.
 
J

jp

That's the first place I went, but there is no help there. I don't remember
this in previous versions of Word as being such a problem.
 
J

jp

Clarification:

This seems to be only an issue when receiving documents from various
sources, or versions of Word. My sources are often email, Word users (older
versions), or other rich text or html formatted documents.

-Jack
 
C

Charles Kenyon

I see no benefit to this feature.

The benefit comes when styles are properly used. The idea is to use a
particular style for a particular type of text, text that serves a
particular purpose in a document. Then when you move text between two
documents, the formatting of say, body text, pasted from one document into
another will match that of the body text in the receiving document. The
problem is that few people use styles correctly.
http://addbalance.com/usersguide/styles.htm

This way, if you tell people submitting things to you to use a certain style
for the body, another for their top heading and a third for secondary
headings, when you paste into your newsletter, the formatting will be what
you have decided should be the formatting for your newsletter.
If someone sending you a Word document wants his/her formatting preserved
easily, the sender needs to set up custom styles (not based on a built-in
style).

Otherwise, in Word 2003, when I paste text, the paste options button pops up
allowing me to keep original formatting. (This seems to work when entire
paragraphs are being pasted.)
 
J

Joseph N

If someone sending you a Word document wants his/her formatting preserved
easily, the sender needs to set up custom styles (not based on a built-in
style).
Click to expand...

Or if "you," that is the original poster, wants your formatting
conventions observed, create a template and send it to your
contributors. You could, if it seems worth the effort, even find
programs or programmed machines on which to create templates in whatever
word processing programs your contributors are using. Then instruct
them how to install and use your templates. Along with this, you could
put together a small style sheet, explaining how to do headings, etc.
Finally, you could have them save as Word, which most word processing
programs of recent vintage will do.
 
J

jp

Duh. The ol' 'Paste Options Button' -- that would be the little button I
always ignored before that has the option to 'keep source formatting.'

That would be what I need. Been there all the time.

Thank you,
-Jack
 
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