Pasted text not accepting styles

shades · Post by **shades** » 2005-01-21 16:27:39

When I copy/paste from web pages, I try to assign a paragraph style. However, while the style drawer shows that the style is assigned, the text and paragraph attributes never change. Thus, I have "BodyTextFirst" as one style with Gentium 11 pt, with an indent of o.5 in. However, the pasted text never changes to those attributes by just applying the paragraph attribute - until I choose "Basic Character" from the style palette. But I don't see any way in the Style Sheet to make paragraph style take on the Basic Character style.

Is that the way it is supposed to work? Other wp programs (Mellel, Word, TextEdit Plus, etc.) don't seem to have this issue.

cchapin · Post by **cchapin** » 2005-01-21 19:53:39

Hi, Shades. See if this works next time. After you paste, click in the text, then click the character formatting tag at the bottom of the window (a black, lowercase, underlined "a"). Choose Select All from the menu that appears. Click the tag again and choose Remove Font.

Another option is to use Edit > Paste Text Only. I use this so often that I have set a MenuKey for it. Unfortunately, this will also eliminate any local formatting, such as italicization of a word.

I think the text you copy and paste from the Web pates is bringing with it font formatting that is over-riding part your paragraph style, so you need to strip out the font formatting either as you paste or after you have pasted.

--Craig

shades · Post by **shades** » 2005-01-22 15:05:34

Thanks, Craig. I tried the first suggestion and it worked well ...

...well mostly. The problem comes when there are several (paragraph and character) styles in the original (with perhaps font coloring, headlines, etc.) - all of that is lost. And if there are several different paragraph styles, this method only selects those that have the current style, so it took several instances of repeating the process to get all of it, and then still lose the colored fonts, and emphasis (italic, bold, etc.).

So, it is handy for most things, but still leaves a gap in pasting from the web.

Post by **charles** » 2005-01-22 17:41:32

Shades:

You can also select all the text you pasted from the web and then click on the Font Tag (the black "a" at the bottom) and select "Remove Font" instead of having to choose select all for each separate paragraph style.

Currently when you apply a style, it removes any formatting you might have already applied to the text except for a few things such as bold, italics, and font. In a future release, applying a style will probably remove any attributes that are set by the style, which will be better for what you are wanting to do.

-Charles