Why do footer contents (page style) change when I cut and pastewhole paragraphs??

M

Michael Levin

I'm using Word 2004 (with all the updates) on an Intel Mac 10.4.11. I have a
fairly simple document (a few embedded JPGs, some paragraph formatting)
that's on plain pages (margins set but nothing else). I need to transfer it
onto an National Institute of Health form, which is a Word doc with the same
margins and some specialized stuff in the headers and footers. When I copy
text from my 1st document and paste it into the second, it converts that
document's page style to be that of the first (removes special footer
content etc.). The only way I can prevent it is if I move pieces of each
paragraph, one by one. If I include more than one paragraph, or the end of a
complete paragraph, it insists on bringing the page style with it. How do I
prevent this??

Thanks in advance,

Mike Levin
 
L

little_creature

Hi,
I would suggest to switch *show invisible* characters on - it's a
button the the Word toolbar which look like greek PI
Then select your paragraph from the first document and apple+C, Place
your cursor in the second document where you want (but before the PI
at the end of the paragraph) and do Edit>Paste>special>unformated text
That should do it, then you can switch the PI off by the same button
(these character are normally not printed so do not worry about them
even if then are visible on the sreen)
 
H

Henk57

Copy the paragraphs, Edit/Paste Special, Paste As: Unformatted text.
This assumes the formatting of the destination document. Does thi
help?
 
C

CyberTaz

Hi Mike -

Have you tried Edit> Paste Special - Unformatted Text?

HTH |:>)
Bob Jones
[MVP] Office:Mac
 
J

John McGhie

Hi ike:

The page style is stored in the master section break of a Word document,
which is hidden below the final paragraph mark in the document.

To copy without copying the section break, place a blank paragraph mark
below the last paragraph mark in the document.

Then copy everything down to, but not including, that last paragraph mark.

Cheers


I'm using Word 2004 (with all the updates) on an Intel Mac 10.4.11. I have a
fairly simple document (a few embedded JPGs, some paragraph formatting)
that's on plain pages (margins set but nothing else). I need to transfer it
onto an National Institute of Health form, which is a Word doc with the same
margins and some specialized stuff in the headers and footers. When I copy
text from my 1st document and paste it into the second, it converts that
document's page style to be that of the first (removes special footer
content etc.). The only way I can prevent it is if I move pieces of each
paragraph, one by one. If I include more than one paragraph, or the end of a
complete paragraph, it insists on bringing the page style with it. How do I
prevent this??

Thanks in advance,

Mike Levin

--
Don't wait for your answer, click here: http://www.word.mvps.org/

Please reply in the group. Please do NOT email me unless I ask you to.

John McGhie, Consultant Technical Writer
McGhie Information Engineering Pty Ltd
http://jgmcghie.fastmail.com.au/
Nhulunbuy, Northern Territory, Australia
+61 4 1209 1410, mailto:[email protected]
 
J

Jeff Wiseman

Michael said:
I'm using Word 2004 (with all the updates) on an Intel Mac
10.4.11. I have a fairly simple document (a few embedded JPGs,
some paragraph formatting) that's on plain pages (margins set
but nothing else). I need to transfer it onto an National
Institute of Health form, which is a Word doc with the same
margins and some specialized stuff in the headers and footers.
When I copy text from my 1st document and paste it into the
second, it converts that document's page style to be that of
the first (removes special footer content etc.). The only way
I can prevent it is if I move pieces of each paragraph, one by
one. If I include more than one paragraph, or the end of a
complete paragraph, it insists on bringing the page style with
it. How do I prevent this??

Go to Normal view. From that view you can see any section breaks
that you may be accidentally copying over into your new document.
Section breaks contain the information that you don't want. Make
sure that what you are copying doesn't include section breaks.

If there are no section breaks in the middle of texts that you
were copying, then use the trick that John McGhie suggested to
avoid picking up the very last paragraph marker (the master
section break) in the document when you do your copy (it's kinda
like another section break just without another section after it :)

I find the Normal view is very useful in many ways of which this
is one. However, one of my GREATEST pet peeves about Word's
defaults is that Word comes with the style area width set to 0"
(everyone should set it to a non-zero amount--I use .8 to 1.0
inch typically). Apparently this is done to make Word "Less
Complcated" to the uninitiated by hiding the fact that the entire
application is actually based on styles. I can't begin to number
the folks who could all of a sudden understand some of Word's
strange behaviors when they could simply see the styles and their
names.

(Hooo, boy. I'm headed off topic. Better stop here...)

:)
 
M

Michael Levin

Hi Mike -

Have you tried Edit> Paste Special - Unformatted Text?

hmmm. Cool - I'll give it a shot Monday (when I'm in front of my work
Mac). But I suspect it will wipe out all the formatting, even that of the
paragraph, right? Surely there's a way to ask it to put in the paragraph as
it is but leave my page footers alone?!? Any way to lock the footers of the
receiving document?

Mike
 
M

Michael Levin

Hi ike:

The page style is stored in the master section break of a Word document,
which is hidden below the final paragraph mark in the document.

To copy without copying the section break, place a blank paragraph mark
below the last paragraph mark in the document.

Then copy everything down to, but not including, that last paragraph mark.

this sounds great and I want to do it right: how do I place a blank
paragraph mark? And, if this is true of the whole document, why does the
receiving doc's page change when I copy just a single paragraph from the
source doc? Doesn't this mean the page style is stored at the end of each
paragraph, not at the end of the whole document? Is there any way to lock
the page style?

Mike
 
C

Clive Huggan

Go to Normal view. From that view you can see any section breaks
that you may be accidentally copying over into your new document.
Section breaks contain the information that you don't want. Make
sure that what you are copying doesn't include section breaks.

If there are no section breaks in the middle of texts that you
were copying, then use the trick that John McGhie suggested to
avoid picking up the very last paragraph marker (the master
section break) in the document when you do your copy (it's kinda
like another section break just without another section after it :)

I find the Normal view is very useful in many ways of which this
is one. However, one of my GREATEST pet peeves about Word's
defaults is that Word comes with the style area width set to 0"
(everyone should set it to a non-zero amount--I use .8 to 1.0
inch typically). Apparently this is done to make Word "Less
Complcated" to the uninitiated by hiding the fact that the entire
application is actually based on styles. I can't begin to number
the folks who could all of a sudden understand some of Word's
strange behaviors when they could simply see the styles and their
names.

(Hooo, boy. I'm headed off topic. Better stop here...)

:)

No, Jeff, keep going. I like to hear it!

Clive
======
 
S

Suzanne S. Barnhill

Me, too!

--
Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft MVP (Word)
Words into Type
Fairhope, Alabama USA

Email cannot be acknowledged; please post all follow-ups to the newsgroup so
all may benefit.
 
S

Suzanne S. Barnhill

The document settings are stored in the final paragraph, which is why you're
going to add a new one by pressing Enter.

--
Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft MVP (Word)
Words into Type
Fairhope, Alabama USA

Email cannot be acknowledged; please post all follow-ups to the newsgroup so
all may benefit.
 
E

Elliott Roper

John McGhie said:
The page style is stored in the master section break of a Word document,
which is hidden below the final paragraph mark in the document.

To copy without copying the section break, place a blank paragraph mark
below the last paragraph mark in the document.

Then copy everything down to, but not including, that last paragraph mark.

Ooh! I hate to say this, coming from a McGhie and all, but that is well
sly!

Why oh why oh why can't you find this kind of stuff in Office doco?

Elliott's modern IT has a new entry:-

*Discoverable* (adj) (of software) No one person knows enough about
this product to write a usable manual or help files.
 
J

Jeff Wiseman

Clive said:
On 25/11/07 5:20 AM, in article #[email protected], "Jeff
Wiseman" <[email protected]> wrote:


No, Jeff, keep going. I like to hear it!

Clive
======

OK. So at least I'll change the subject line for Clive and
Suzanne but I'll leave it on this thread since it does have a lot
to do with why the O.P. is having some grief :)

My favorite quote was by (I believe) Mr. Einstein. It goes
something like this:

"Every problem should be reduced to its simplest form--but NOT
simpler!"

Although it is necessary for management to simplify issues in
order to manage them, the world is FULL of complete, total,
screw-ups because of some lame-brain with a lot of corporate
power (or a design team that has not been given decent system
analysis and/or requirements modeling support) oversimplifying an
inherently complicated issue (or an issue that is more complex
than they want to deal with because they can't even understand it
themselves!).

Trying to hide the essential superstructure of a product from the
very people who need to use it (especially software tools) is
just plain dumb. It's like building a house with glass walls.
Everytime you want to go to the kitchen, or the back door, you're
going to ram into something! That's fine and even occasionally
fun in a circus, but not when you have to get things done. If the
walls are visible, the inexperienced person with the only desire
to get to the back door may wonder what those walls are all
about, but AT LEAST THEY KNOW THAT THEY ARE THERE AND CAN CAUSE
THEM PAIN IF IGNORED.

Styles are the superstructure of Word document creation and
manipulation. They should be clearly visible by default so that
an individual (especially newbies) at least knows that they are
there and when trying to get from point A (e.g., how come when I
try to change these paragraphs, only some of them change...) to
point B (I want these all to change together...) they don't keep
ramming into an invisible wall that they can't see (turn on the
style names area and look at their names--Oh, gee! they don't all
have the same name--I see what's going on!).

In spite of MS's attempt to "simplify" the styles issues by
"wishing them away" (i.e., just hide them), ultimately everyone
ramming into the wall STILL has to learn something about them
anyway in order to accomplish what they need to--so why not at
least make them visible so that right from day one, everyone
knows at least that they exist?

IF MS really wanted to help simplify things, they should (among
other things):

1) Have the normal DEFAULT for the style area width be .8 inches
or thereabouts. If people don't like it, they can turn it off
after they know it exists. After all, we have to do that for
every other friggin' feature in Word anyway, why not this one?!?

2) Develop a set of default styles that at least MAKEs SENSE, are
consistent, and looks nice when used with DECENT SPACINGS, since
they refuse to document this stuff anyway (why in the world is
Heading 8 a larger font than Heading 6? They are all in the same
outline number set. Just because you CAN make them different
doesn't mean the defaults should look scrambled). Make it a
simple set. Put all the fancy letter head and resume stuff in
custom templates so we don't have to wade through all that
garbage for EVERY SINGLE DOCUMENT WE MAKE! Most people don't
really WANT to spend all of their spare time and holiday
vacations trying to learn how to create and subsequently
generating their own custom templates. Shoot, I know how to do
this now and I STILL haven't really gotten around to it :-S

(Of course this would reduce some of the usefulness of papers
produced by John and Clive on useful style sets, but I don't
think that they would mind much...)


Now, relative to the original poster's scenario. It's fine to
keep all that formatting with paragraphs when they are copied in
from another document as long as it is easy, intuitive, and
obvious how to force their formats back to the style master in
the new document. But this is even made complicated by MS's
defaults hiding stuff. Why in the world is the Reset Para and the
Reset Character Formatting functions not under the Format menu by
default so that you can undo formatting inconsistencies
introduced from other document texts such as is happening to the
Original Poster?? You have to now learn how to customize tool
bars and menus in order to put something back that never should
have been left out IMHO.

Well, maybe there IS some reasoning since even those functions
don't always perform the intended/expected application anyway and
that does cause confusion.

E.g., when you put a number list style in a paragraph style, the
number list style takes over the paragraph style's indentation,
etc.. Besides the fact that this is a totally non-cohesive and
brain-dead way of handling these object inheritances and their
attributes in the first place (ain't gonna go there, Nope, ain't
gonna do it...), if you select the paragraph and do a Reset Para
on it, the numbering attribute doesn't necessarily return to
those defined in that document's paragraph style as would be
expected. So even after the reset, the paragraph STILL may not
behave and appear as other paragraphs with the style.

(And why don't we have an automatic function that when all styles
and/or paragraphs that use a particular number list have been
deleted, the "last one out turns off the light" and that number
list style/template is purged? Its not used anymore and since
there is no decent way to tell them apart in the galleries, they
become useless flotsam in the bowels of your documents where they
accumulate like scum on a Texas pond until there is enough there
that you can no longer even open the document without something
crashing)

Why? Why? Why?

(...pant, pant...)


Well, I feel much better now! Time for dinner...

:)
 
J

Jeff Wiseman

Elliott said:
Ooh! I hate to say this, coming from a McGhie and all, but that is well
sly!

Why oh why oh why can't you find this kind of stuff in Office doco?

Because my dear Watson, it's a KLOODGE
:)

A document contains sections
A section contains paragraphs

So why in the world does the last paragraph in a document contain
that document object's attributes?

Since by screwy design the document that contains the paragraph
has to have it's attributes stored IN that paragraph, you always
have to waste at least one paragraph in the document just to hold
some of the document/section object's attributes. For this reason
Microsoft paragraphs are schizophrenic. They think they are
paragraphs. They think they are documents. They think they are
sections. In order to do anything useful when moving a paragraph
you have to create a useless paragraph (i.e., empty) in order to
hold the document/section attributes so that you can copy the
useful text of the paragraph to some other place without the
document/section attribute contamination going with it.

If MS spent all their time documenting the Kloodges necessary to
get around their poor design structures, it would just make them
look worse, wouldn't it?

Of course it may just be that maintaining such a monstrosity is
so time consuming that there is little time to document potential
kloodges...
 
J

John McGhie

Hi Jeff:

I think the defect was originally found and named "Reductia ad absurdia".
Latin was the most common language in use at the time :)

Sadly, this kind of design is the natural product of the latest
buzzword-driven software engineering methodologies.

So the problem is going to get much worse before it gets better :)

Cheers


OK. So at least I'll change the subject line for Clive and
Suzanne but I'll leave it on this thread since it does have a lot
to do with why the O.P. is having some grief :)

My favorite quote was by (I believe) Mr. Einstein. It goes
something like this:

"Every problem should be reduced to its simplest form--but NOT
simpler!"

Although it is necessary for management to simplify issues in
order to manage them, the world is FULL of complete, total,
screw-ups because of some lame-brain with a lot of corporate
power (or a design team that has not been given decent system
analysis and/or requirements modeling support) oversimplifying an
inherently complicated issue (or an issue that is more complex
than they want to deal with because they can't even understand it
themselves!).

Trying to hide the essential superstructure of a product from the
very people who need to use it (especially software tools) is
just plain dumb. It's like building a house with glass walls.
Everytime you want to go to the kitchen, or the back door, you're
going to ram into something! That's fine and even occasionally
fun in a circus, but not when you have to get things done. If the
walls are visible, the inexperienced person with the only desire
to get to the back door may wonder what those walls are all
about, but AT LEAST THEY KNOW THAT THEY ARE THERE AND CAN CAUSE
THEM PAIN IF IGNORED.

Styles are the superstructure of Word document creation and
manipulation. They should be clearly visible by default so that
an individual (especially newbies) at least knows that they are
there and when trying to get from point A (e.g., how come when I
try to change these paragraphs, only some of them change...) to
point B (I want these all to change together...) they don't keep
ramming into an invisible wall that they can't see (turn on the
style names area and look at their names--Oh, gee! they don't all
have the same name--I see what's going on!).

In spite of MS's attempt to "simplify" the styles issues by
"wishing them away" (i.e., just hide them), ultimately everyone
ramming into the wall STILL has to learn something about them
anyway in order to accomplish what they need to--so why not at
least make them visible so that right from day one, everyone
knows at least that they exist?

IF MS really wanted to help simplify things, they should (among
other things):

1) Have the normal DEFAULT for the style area width be .8 inches
or thereabouts. If people don't like it, they can turn it off
after they know it exists. After all, we have to do that for
every other friggin' feature in Word anyway, why not this one?!?

2) Develop a set of default styles that at least MAKEs SENSE, are
consistent, and looks nice when used with DECENT SPACINGS, since
they refuse to document this stuff anyway (why in the world is
Heading 8 a larger font than Heading 6? They are all in the same
outline number set. Just because you CAN make them different
doesn't mean the defaults should look scrambled). Make it a
simple set. Put all the fancy letter head and resume stuff in
custom templates so we don't have to wade through all that
garbage for EVERY SINGLE DOCUMENT WE MAKE! Most people don't
really WANT to spend all of their spare time and holiday
vacations trying to learn how to create and subsequently
generating their own custom templates. Shoot, I know how to do
this now and I STILL haven't really gotten around to it :-S

(Of course this would reduce some of the usefulness of papers
produced by John and Clive on useful style sets, but I don't
think that they would mind much...)


Now, relative to the original poster's scenario. It's fine to
keep all that formatting with paragraphs when they are copied in
from another document as long as it is easy, intuitive, and
obvious how to force their formats back to the style master in
the new document. But this is even made complicated by MS's
defaults hiding stuff. Why in the world is the Reset Para and the
Reset Character Formatting functions not under the Format menu by
default so that you can undo formatting inconsistencies
introduced from other document texts such as is happening to the
Original Poster?? You have to now learn how to customize tool
bars and menus in order to put something back that never should
have been left out IMHO.

Well, maybe there IS some reasoning since even those functions
don't always perform the intended/expected application anyway and
that does cause confusion.

E.g., when you put a number list style in a paragraph style, the
number list style takes over the paragraph style's indentation,
etc.. Besides the fact that this is a totally non-cohesive and
brain-dead way of handling these object inheritances and their
attributes in the first place (ain't gonna go there, Nope, ain't
gonna do it...), if you select the paragraph and do a Reset Para
on it, the numbering attribute doesn't necessarily return to
those defined in that document's paragraph style as would be
expected. So even after the reset, the paragraph STILL may not
behave and appear as other paragraphs with the style.

(And why don't we have an automatic function that when all styles
and/or paragraphs that use a particular number list have been
deleted, the "last one out turns off the light" and that number
list style/template is purged? Its not used anymore and since
there is no decent way to tell them apart in the galleries, they
become useless flotsam in the bowels of your documents where they
accumulate like scum on a Texas pond until there is enough there
that you can no longer even open the document without something
crashing)

Why? Why? Why?

(...pant, pant...)


Well, I feel much better now! Time for dinner...

:)

--
Don't wait for your answer, click here: http://www.word.mvps.org/

Please reply in the group. Please do NOT email me unless I ask you to.

John McGhie, Consultant Technical Writer
McGhie Information Engineering Pty Ltd
http://jgmcghie.fastmail.com.au/
Nhulunbuy, Northern Territory, Australia
+61 4 1209 1410, mailto:[email protected]
 
J

John McGhie

Hi Michael:

this sounds great and I want to do it right: how do I place a blank
paragraph mark?

Hit Enter/Return at the end of the last one.
And, if this is true of the whole document, why does the
receiving doc's page change when I copy just a single paragraph from the
source doc? Doesn't this mean the page style is stored at the end of each
paragraph, not at the end of the whole document? Is there any way to lock
the page style?

Three possible reasons:

1) You have a section break hidden in that paragraph mark that you haven't
seen.

2) The paragraph you copied is formatted with the same style as the
paragraph you are pasting into, but it has different properties. Word is
helpfully copying too much information. Word ALWAYS copies too much
information :) Use Edit>Paste Special>Unfomatted Text to overcome that
one.

3) The paragraph you copied contains a comment, and the document you pasted
into is set to "Use balloons" for comments. Word will re-arrange the
display to make room for the balloons.

Hope this helps

--
Don't wait for your answer, click here: http://www.word.mvps.org/

Please reply in the group. Please do NOT email me unless I ask you to.

John McGhie, Consultant Technical Writer
McGhie Information Engineering Pty Ltd
http://jgmcghie.fastmail.com.au/
Nhulunbuy, Northern Territory, Australia
+61 4 1209 1410, mailto:[email protected]
 
C

Carl Witthoft

Michael Levin said:
hmmm. Cool - I'll give it a shot Monday (when I'm in front of my work
Mac). But I suspect it will wipe out all the formatting, even that of the
paragraph, right? Surely there's a way to ask it to put in the paragraph as
it is but leave my page footers alone?!? Any way to lock the footers of the
receiving document?

So long as you paste into an existing paragraph, the unformatted text
will pick up the existing paragraph's style. At least, I 'm pretty
sure that's always worked for me.
 
C

Carl Witthoft

Exactly what I would have said. The Style Area is indispensable when
formatting a document. But, as I whined in another thread :-( , I
can't even get people to hide 3 or 4 toolbars that they absolutely never
use.
 

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