Maintaing existing format when cutting and pasting files in WORD

[lagmy]

I am working on putting together a newsletter for my daughter's school. I receive various flyers in WORD format and then edit them and sequence them into one general file. Often when I cut and paste the format does not stay intact, the font style, size and color often changes. I have tried using insert page and section break prior to pasting and have tried inserting a file rather than cutting and pasting and it still does not work. I have also used select all on the original and given it a unique style name and that hasn't worked. If I cut and paste into a new blank document it works fine. However, if I put it into my existing general file it does crazy things. I would hope there is a solution to this problem.

 

[Eggles]

My guess is that there is a conflict in the styles between the two Word docs. If the text in the 'received' document has styles assigned to it, and then your existing document into which you are pasting it also has a style of the same name but it has different attributes (font, point size, bolding, indenting, etc) then Word will get confused.

How to resolve this? The only thing I can think of is to ask your contributors to NOT apply any styles to their document, and to manually add the formatting and ensure the whole document is in the Normal style. Alternatively, you could open each of your received docs in a new document and look at the formatting styles that have been applied. Very tedious. Sorry I can't offer a better solution.

 

[GerryMars]

There is a very simple macro created by Woody Leonhard that will do what you want. You can read about it at:

http://www.woodyswatch.com/office/archtemplate.asp?v6-n45

 

[michaelmorris62]

For those happier with their mouse, Woody's solution can be (even more) easily applied :
mouse to Tools - Macro - Record New Macro; name it, give it a keyboard shortcut (overwrite Ctrl V; or I have it on CtrlShift X to keep it all left-handed), store it in Normal.dot, then
mouse to: Edit - Paste special - Paste Unformatted text. Voila!

 

[benjamenus]

For information: The formatting of a word document is stored in the last paragraph marker of that document. If you want to copy those styles to a new document, copy the paragraph marker also. If you don't want those styles to come across, don't include it.