Paste Text

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Pasting Text Into A Text Editor

Chances are that when you're starting out with your website, you'll need to copy/paste some text from a Word or PDF document into a web page.  PDF typically plays nice, but Word likes to add its own styles that aren't always compatible with the web.  The following article will show you how to avoid a mess when pasting from Word.

Step 1: Copy Your Text

This is a bit of a basic computer skill, but just in case we'll cover it anyway.  Open up your Word or PDF document, click and drag your mouse to highlight the text you want to copy, then either click the "Copy" button in Word, or on your keyboard hold the "CTRL" key down while also pressing the "C" key (if you're using a Mac, the combination is "Command + C"). This will copy the text to your computer's memory.  You will not see any visual cues that this has worked.

Step 2: Paste Your Text

Assuming you are already editing a web page (if not, here's how you do it), open up the text editor and position your mouse where you'd like to paste your new text.  Now, click on the "Paste" icon in the text editor's toolbar.

A dialog will pop up with instructions on how to paste your text.  Paste your text into the box provided by clicking inside it, then holding the "CTRL" key on your keyboard while also pressing "V" (on Mac, the combination is "Command + V").  Click "OK".

Step 3: Fix Extra Spaces & Styling

Even following these instructions, you may still have a little more work to do. This should be limited to cleaning up some extra spaces and updating any text that had previously been bold or italic text (this will have been removed along with the other styles from Word).