Why am I getting "plainbody" style against my will in Word 2000?

[Word Worrier]

Okay, shoot me, I don't use styles in my Word documents. So I expect
"normal" as the style through every character of a document.

I'm working on a document right now that is being pieced together as a
collaborative effort, with input from several dozen others. They're
emailing my yahoo account with their contributions, then I cut and
paste it into the document.

The document is all verdana type, primarily 8-point, except for
certain headings that are bolded and 10-point. Very simple. ALL the
input I'm receiving is to be formatted as verdana 8-point type in the
end document, although it doesn't arrive to me looking that way.

In theory, all I should have to do is copy the input from my yahoo
mail account, paste into my document, then highlight it and set the
font face and size. Or paste it into a new Word document, then
highlight it, set font face and size, copy again, and paste into my
document.

But when I use either approach, Word wants to call the pasted text
"plainbody" style, whatever that means (I can't find that term in the
Word MVP site, or in a search of google groups).

If I highlight the "plainbody" text and try to change it to "normal,"
one of two undesirable things happens:

1. Nothing.
2. The style changes to normal, but so does the appearance of the font
face and size.

So my two questions are (1) why is this happening, and more
importantly, (2) how can I just copy out of an email message and paste
into my document without this unwanted style stuff screwing me up?

Understand of course that, so far as I can tell, the document's
appearance is fine, even with the unwanted plainbody style. I just
don't want to be dealing with this unknown item, especially since I'm
guessing it is making my document bigger than it would otherwise be.

 

[Shauna Kelly]

Hi Word Worrier

I've never seen a style called "plainbody" in Word. It's not one of Word's
built-in styles. So it's likely that "plainbody" arrived with some text from
one of your contributors.

If there is a "plainbody" style in your document, then, given the way you're
working, I suggest that you delete it. How you do that depends on what
version of Word you're using. But start with either Format > Styles or
Format > Styles and Formatting, depending on your version. When you delete
the "plainbody" style, any text that was in that style will revert to Normal
style.

It's possible that your problems are occurring because your Normal style is
set to automatically update. For info on how to fix that, see
http://www.mvps.org/word/FAQs/Formatting/WholeDocumentReformatted.htm

Finally, I would propose that you proceed as follows.

1. Modify Normal style to be Verdana 8pt (even if you don't use styles<g>).
To do that, follow the instructions at
How to modify styles in Microsoft Word
http://www.ShaunaKelly.com/word/styles/ModifyAStyle.html

2. When you get text from a contributor, copy from their email as usual.
When you go to paste into Word, choose Edit > Paste Special. Choose
Unformatted Text (or Unformatted Unicode Text). In this context
"unformatted" means "just plonk the text in my document, and make it take on
the formatting of the paragraph into which I'll paste it". If Normal style
is Verdana 8pt, and if your cursor is in a paragraph in Normal style, then
the text you paste as unformatted text will be Verdana 8pt.

Hope this helps.

Shauna Kelly. Microsoft MVP.
http://www.shaunakelly.com/word

 

[Word Worrier]

This was helpful, especially the "past special" unformatted text tip.

The style stuff is a pain.

I'm in Word 2000, and my "normal" style is NOT set to automatically
update, so I don't know what is going on there.

But pasting as unformatted text is solving my problems.