When copying and pasting content from Microsoft Word, Collaborate gives you control of how much formatting from Word you want to maintain when pasting it into Collaborate’s web-based, HTML content.
Copying and pasting from Microsoft Word is a common way to create your first Collaborate templates. Often, existing document templates live in Microsoft Word and you want to adapt that content to Collaborate.
Collaborates’s copy and paste functionality seamlessly translates formatting elements found in Word into the corresponding format options in HTML. In other words, if your text is bold, red, and size 14 in Word, Collaborate will take that styling and translate it into the proper HTML.
When you paste text from an outside source into a document, a modal will appear giving you an option to control how much formatting will be brought into your document. Two important questions to ask here: 1) “How much of the original formatting do I want to keep?” and 2) “Do I want the content to fully take advantage of Collaborate’s Theme Builder?”
Use this option when you want to keep an exact style match from Word and are not concerned with using your Collaborate Theme Builder settings. It will attempt to keep all Word formatting options and will override your Collaborate theme settings. This means that if you manually styled something in Word (for example, selected a section title, made it size 18, bold, and red), then it will take that same format in Collaborate. If you keep source formatting, it will override all formatting from your Collaborate theme. Even if you try to set that text as a header from your theme, the formatting you’ve copied from Word will override your Collaborate theme format options.
Don't include images when adapting text content from Word. Copy and paste those images in separately.
This option is good for keeping some of your styling from Microsoft Word, while still allowing you to take advantage of Collaborate’s Theme Builder. This selection will remove formatting like font color, font, bulleted list margins, and paragraph style. For example, you could select the relevant text that you’ve moved into Collaborate and select a heading style from your Collaborate theme.
Note: Don't include images when adapting text content from Word. Copy and paste those images in separately.
Keep Text Only
Use this option when you want to copy content from Word but also have absolute flexibility to re-style content using Collaborate’s web editor and selected theme. All formatting from Word will be stripped from your pasted content, and you will use Collaborate’s editor and Theme Builder to style your content. In most scenarios, we recommend adapting content using this option.
Pasting as Plain Text will not include any images from the original copied content.
Formatting elements supported by this feature include, but are not limited to:
- Headings
- Bold
- Italics
- Underline
- Strikethrough
- Superscript
- Bullets
- Numbering
- Line spacing
- Indentation (space or tab key)
- Hyperlinks
In any of these options, your Collaborate theme will still control the overall design of your document but might be overridden by the formatting options from Word based on the selection you chose when copying and pasting.
In general, this article applies to copy and paste from any outside source. As was said earlier, we recommend pasting as Keep Text Only in almost all scenarios. Some notable exceptions are when pasting in the content that is already Collaborate content or when pasting in a table from Word that has specific styling in it.
