Pasting Without Fear in Microsoft Word
This works for Word 2010 and up.
Use the Paste Options Button
By default, when you paste text into Microsoft Word, you’ll see a small floating button at the end of the pasted text that has the word (Ctrl) in it.
Click on the drop-down, and you get these options with three icons – one with a paintbrush, one with a blue arrow, and one with a capital A on it.
Those button icons allow you to choose how much of the original formatting you want to keep.
- The leftmost button (the clipboard with the paintbrush) allows you to keep all the source formatting.
- The center button (the blue arrow) instructs Word to attempt to merge the formatting to the complementary with the destination document’s formatting.
- The button on the right (the bold Capital A) makes the pasted text unformatted, which allows it to take on the formatting of your destination document.
This Paste Options Button can give you some on-the-spot help with formatting pasted text. Some users find this feature bothersome and interfering, specifically when the Paste Options Button hides other text on the page.
Setting a Default Paste Mode
At the bottom of that Paste Options button, however, you’ll see a “Set Default Paste” command. Click it (or go to the File tab in Word 2010 or the Office Button in Word 2007, then go to Options | Advanced), and you can customize the default paste action (keep source formatting, merge formatting, or text only) in any of four situations.
- Pasting with in the same document
- Pasting between documents
- Pasting between documents when style definitions conflict
- Pasting from other programs
And you have the three choices as mentioned above.
In particular, if you do a lot of pasting from old WordPerfect documents, it is better to change the setting for “pasting from other programs” to either “merge formatting” or “text only.” This is also where you can turn off the Paste Options if you don’t want to see it any more.
Note that, even if you change these default settings, you always have the option of choosing a different paste method in a specific instance.
Using the Paste Button If, in a particular situation, your default paste mode isn’t what you want, you can always go to the Home tab and use the Paste button to specify “keep source formatting,” “merge formatting,” or “text only”.
For even more options, you can use the Paste Special command to finely tune the paste result: Paste Special is on that down-arrow of Paste on the Home Ribbon.
This dialog box is contextual, meaning that depending on the source of the text you’re pasting, you’ll get a different list of choices.
If All Else Fails
If you paste some text into a document and get an unpredictable or undesirable result, your first line of defense is CTRL-Z, which will undo the last action you took. If that’s not an option, use CTRL-SPACE, CTRL-Q, and/or CTRL-SHIFT-N to strip out any undesirable formatting.