If you find that your documents need reformatting every time you paste an item, you can save considerable time by having Word 2007 take over some of those formatting chores for you. After you delete a single word, does MS Word leave an extra space behind? When you cut and paste a paragraph, does an extra blank line remain where you cut it, or is all formatting lost after you paste it?
Follow the steps below to prevent extra spacing or reformatting from occurring in your documents:
- Click the Office button.
- Click the Word Options button.
- Click Advanced.
- Under Editing Options, select the When Selecting, Automatically Select Entire Word check box.
- Select the Use Smart Paragraph Selection check box.
- Click OK.
Now when you double-click a word, Word will select both the word and the space that follows it. No extra spaces will remain when you move or delete.
When you select a paragraph, MS Word will now automatically include the paragraph mark, so that when you cut and paste a paragraph, no blank paragraphs stay behind, and all paragraph formatting will remain intact.
You can also set MS Word 2007’s editing options so that when you paste an item originally cut or copied from another document — or even from another program — the pasted item will take on the formatting of its new location.
- To set these options, follow steps 1 through 3 above.
- Go to Cut | Copy | Paste and select Match Destination Formatting in both the Pasting Between Documents and Pasting From Other Programs menu list boxes.
Now, when you copy a selection from a PDF document, MS Word will discard most formatting originally applied directly to the copied text but retain the formatting used for emphasis, such as bold and italic.
The rest of the copied text will take on the paragraph’s style characteristics, as well as any direct formatting characteristics of the text immediately preceding the cursor where you pasted it.
