PUB: Text Formatting Lost When Cutting and Pasting (140001)

SYMPTOMS

If you copy and paste text from one paragraph into another, the formatting of that text may assume the formatting of the destination paragraph.

This problem also occurs if you drag text from one paragraph and drop it into another.

The problem does not occur if you copy complete paragraphs and paste them when the text insertion point is not in the middle of another paragraph.

NOTE: This behavior is different than Publisher version 2.0.

CAUSE

When you move text from one paragraph to another, Publisher tries to determine whether you want the incoming text to match the existing text in the paragraph. If you copy several words from another paragraph, most of the time Publisher changes the formatting to match the destination paragraph. If the formatting of the source paragraph is very different (for example, the text is a different font, a different size, a different color, and underlined), Publisher retains the source formatting.

RESOLUTION

To force Publisher to retain the text formatting, you can do the following:

Select the source text and click Copy on the Edit menu.
Place the text insertion point where you want the source text to go.
Press ENTER twice. This will open up an empty line in the middle of the destination text.
Put the insertion point in the empty line.
On the Edit menu, click Paste. The text will paste in.
If this text was supposed to be in the middle of the existing paragraph, backspace over the line break at the beginning and end of the inserted text.

STATUS

Microsoft has confirmed this to be a problem in the Microsoft products listed at the beginning of this article. This problem was corrected in Microsoft Publisher 98.