Keep formatting (XP)

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I need to merge two Word documents: one contains direct formatted text and the other a table with directly formatted cells. Despite the way I tried (copy-paste, insert section break and copy-paste, insert document) the resulting document changes cell formatting. How can I preserve it?

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When you paste paragraphs from one document into another, if the styles do not exist in the destination document, they will be added and the pasted text should look the same in both documents. If styles of the same name do exist, the pasted paragraphs will conform to the style of the destination document, but direct formatting should be preserved. Inserting a section break won’t change this because style definitions are global for the entire document (unlike, say, the content of headers and footers).

Using Insert>File can be useful if you want to avoid carrying over implicit formatting in the last section of a document, such as page setup settings, which can be thought of as being stored by the last paragraph. I don’t know whether it changes anything else compared with copy-and-paste.

Without seeing your documents, I don’t know how much work it would be to do this, but I suggest defining new paragraph or character styles to replace the direct formatting in one or both documents. This should be less troublesome than copying a bunch of Normal-styled paragraph all into the same document.

Last but not least, there is a setting that causes direct formatting to become incorporated into a style definition. (See illustration.) If this setting is on in your destination document, I can’t predict what Word will do when you paste large amounts of directly formatted text.

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Hi,

I have a similar challenge:
The problem is always the same: Copying text from other documents results in bringing a lot of other formatting, which I do not want.
There is a function to paste without formatting, but if I have some text, e.g. a table, for which I would like to keep the formatting, how to do that?? I only want to get rid of Headings and other text formatting which is not in my normal.dot or in my document.

Thanks in advance!

Bj

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Remove the formatting in the source document, for example by setting the text you want to be ‘plain’ to the Normal style. Then copy and paste, and finally close the source document without saving it.

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Remove the formatting in the source document, for example by setting the text you want to be ‘plain’ to the Normal style. Then copy and paste, and finally close the source document without saving it.

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Some shortcuts for what Hans is describing are:

Ctrl+Shift+N — Change selected paragraphs to Normal style

Ctrl+Spacebar — Remove direct font formatting (restore font formatting to style)

Ctrl+Q — Remove direct paragraph formatting (restore paragraph formatting to style)

By applying one or more of these on your source text, before you copy it, you make it much more likely to adapt to the style definitions in your destination document.

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Thanks to everyone!

It looks to me that it will be a “large” job in the destination document to bring the formatting to what I want it to be.

The result is presumably that I should copy e. g. tables, which I want to keep the formatting for, as they are and the text containing the unwanted format as unformatted.

Thanks for your help.

Bj

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Thanks to everyone!

It looks to me that it will be a “large” job in the destination document to bring the formatting to what I want it to be.

The result is presumably that I should copy e. g. tables, which I want to keep the formatting for, as they are and the text containing the unwanted format as unformatted.

Thanks for your help.

Bj

Reply | Quote

Some shortcuts for what Hans is describing are:

Ctrl+Shift+N — Change selected paragraphs to Normal style

Ctrl+Spacebar — Remove direct font formatting (restore font formatting to style)

Ctrl+Q — Remove direct paragraph formatting (restore paragraph formatting to style)

By applying one or more of these on your source text, before you copy it, you make it much more likely to adapt to the style definitions in your destination document.

Reply | Quote

Hi,

I have a similar challenge:
The problem is always the same: Copying text from other documents results in bringing a lot of other formatting, which I do not want.
There is a function to paste without formatting, but if I have some text, e.g. a table, for which I would like to keep the formatting, how to do that?? I only want to get rid of Headings and other text formatting which is not in my normal.dot or in my document.

Thanks in advance!

Bj

Reply | Quote

When you paste paragraphs from one document into another, if the styles do not exist in the destination document, they will be added and the pasted text should look the same in both documents. If styles of the same name do exist, the pasted paragraphs will conform to the style of the destination document, but direct formatting should be preserved. Inserting a section break won’t change this because style definitions are global for the entire document (unlike, say, the content of headers and footers).

Using Insert>File can be useful if you want to avoid carrying over implicit formatting in the last section of a document, such as page setup settings, which can be thought of as being stored by the last paragraph. I don’t know whether it changes anything else compared with copy-and-paste.

Without seeing your documents, I don’t know how much work it would be to do this, but I suggest defining new paragraph or character styles to replace the direct formatting in one or both documents. This should be less troublesome than copying a bunch of Normal-styled paragraph all into the same document.

Last but not least, there is a setting that causes direct formatting to become incorporated into a style definition. (See illustration.) If this setting is on in your destination document, I can’t predict what Word will do when you paste large amounts of directly formatted text.

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