How to keep font type, color, size when pasting

[digitalnoob]

Captivate 7, Windows 7

Hi,

When I copy and paste text from a caption or smart object, etc. from one slide into a caption, or smart object, etc on another slide, the font type, color, and size all change. Since I have to do a lot of copying and pasting of text, this is taking a lot of time.

The type of font, color, and size are the default font for the template. So why is it changing?

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

thanks!

[RodWard]

Have you checked the Object Style setting for the captions into which you are copying the text?  The Object Style of the target object will normally over-ride any styles applied at the source object.

[Lilybiri]

Really Rod? I see a totally different behavior: tried pasting text, that I had formatted, into another caption, shape and the formatting was kept: change of font, size and color.  Even when copying to special captions like quizzing captions, font formatting remained and there was not even an override + with the style. Something I miss?

[RodWard]

Are you talking about formatting applied inline to text in a text caption? I'm referring to the formatting applied to the overall text caption via Object Styles.  If you take text from one object with an applied Object Style, and paste that text into another object with a different Object Style, my belief was that the object style of the destination object would over-ride.  Inline styles are a separate thing.

I understood that the original poster was not talking about inline styles.

[Lilybiri]

I understood that he was talking about copy/pasting text between text containers. Indeed, inline styling.

[digitalnoob]

Hi Rod and Lilybiri,

thanks so much for your replies

I have been copying and pasting from:

• smart shape to smart shape
• smart shape to (rollover) caption
• (rollover) caption to smart shape
• multiple choice distractor to smart shape
• Microsoft Word to smart shape
• Microsoft Word to (rollover) caption

Each time, it results in a new font, new style, new spacing, new size

I checked Edit-->Object Style Manager. I looked at all the Standard Objects, Quizzing Objects and Runtime Dialog (expanded accordion menus). All of them (except for 2 button labels) show the font I want, correct style, correct spacing, but size does change to th pre-set, which is fine.

Any ideas?

[Lilybiri]

Formatting from Word will not totally be preserved. Can you give an example, so that I can try to repro this issue:

• from which object, with which style do you copy the text
• when you paste it into another object, what changes and what is the text style of that new object

And is the default style applied, for both objects, no overridden style?

[digitalnoob]

Hi Lilybiri,

You wrote:

• "from which object, with which style do you copy the text"

I have been copying and pasting from:

• smart shape to smart shape
• smart shape to (rollover) caption
• (rollover) caption to smart shape
• multiple choice distractor to smart shape
• Microsoft Word to smart shape
• Microsoft Word to (rollover) caption

........................................

• "when you paste it into another object, what changes and what is the text style of that new object"

My source font from other Captivate text captions and text in smart objects: 18 or 20 Myriad Pro, Regular, top alignment, spacing 1, white text.

When I copy from/to the items above, the text turns into Calibri, smaller font size, regular, middle (vertical) alignment spacing, spacing 1.4, sometimes white, sometimes black text.

very strange

Sorry, I don't understand what you meant by "And is the default style applied, for both objects, no overridden style?" How do I check and how would I do this?

thanks

[Lilybiri]

Do the styles applied to those objects have a +sign next to it? That means overridden, the normal object style was changed manually.

Do I understand that you have text in a shape or caption, that is formatted with the default object style for that shape or caption and that means Myriad Pro, 18point. When you select that text (edit mode, CTRL-A or using mouse) and copy it to another object it changes to Calibri? And is Calibri in the default style of that second object? Calibri with same font size looks different than Myriad Pro.

Alignment is a property of the object itself, spacing as well. And what do you mean by spacing 14? You cannot space in pixels or points in Captivate, only decimal in the Format accordion. You are now talking about copying from Word, I suspect. Word is meant for print, Captivate not. Formatting from Word will not be honored, told that before.

I did this experiment: have a text caption, default style = Glass Blue for which I changed the font Myriad Pro to 20p, centered horizontaly and vertically and I made this the default caption style.

I copied the text from this caption and pasted it into a shape, that had Calibri as default font, 27p, Italic in another color, left aligned, top aligned, spacing = 1. The pasted text didn't take on the font, size, color, attribute nor spacing from the style of that shape. What was left from the default shape style was the vertical alignment (top), even the horizontal alignment (centered) was kept. Of course the object style was now marked as overridden because of this.

So, I don't understand why this is not working for you? Again, I'm not talking about copying from Word. I even tried with an answer on a question slide, and same formatting was kept (but since A)... was not included in the copied text, that kept the style of the Answer caption)

[digitalnoob]

Hi Lilybiri,

Wow, thanks for your efforts to help me out.

"Do the styles applied to those objects have a +sign next to it? " ----where would I see that?

"Do I understand that you have text in a shape or caption, that is formatted with the default object style for that shape or caption and that means Myriad Pro, 18point. When you select that text (edit mode, CTRL-A or using mouse) and copy it to another object it changes to Calibri? And is Calibri in the default style of that second object? Calibri with same font size looks different than Myriad Pro."  ---correct, that is what happens. Do you think that, because the Word doc text is in Calibri, the formatting would be residual? When I copy text from Word and paste it into a smart object, caption, etc, the text retains Word's formatting. I then have to manually change the formatting to the default Myriad Pro (I say default because that's what it is in the Object Style Manager). When I then copy that text from one smart object or caption to another one, it then shows as Calibri in the new smart object or caption. Arghhhhh!

Regarding the 1.4 spacing, that is the vertical spacing.

cheers and thanks

[Lilybiri]

You don't copy Word text to a desktop publisher neither (Framemaker, InDesign). It has no sense to format text in Word if you are going to use it in Captivate.

Spacing in Captivate is only in the Format accordion, not in points or pixels, but in decimals: 1.2 (which is a good line spacing) means 20% higher than character height. That is different from spacing settings in Word with Before and After points.

You have probably also to learn what the buttons under the Style (see image) mean. See Help.

Lilybiri

[digitalnoob]

thanks very much for your help

[Tami Midzinski]

I'm having the same copy and paste issue. Everytime I copy a slide from one file to a whole new slide project and reapply my saved theme it makes my text boxes go center justified instead of remaining left justified. Let me explain more. I can take that same theme and apply it to another project and it keeps the caption boxes where they should be. It only seems to be happening on certain slides. I even called tech support and they couldn't figure it out. Can anybody help me?

[Tami Midzinski]

I resolved my issue. Thanks for taking the time to read this.

[RodWard]

It's traditional on this list to let everyone know HOW you resolved the issue so that others with the same problem can get a solution.

So what did you do?

[Tami Midzinski]

I rebuilt my theme all from a new file. In the process I found that one of my theme slides had a caption box that was center justified. I removed that slide and it seemed to resolve the issue when I would copy and paste other caption text from my original slides.- and sorry for not posting how I resolved my issue. Didn't know I needed to.

[Lilybiri]

Your copy/paste problem is totally different from the one described by the OP (about copy/paste text), since you are talking about slides. You should have started a new thread because it is another subject.

[Lilybiri]

A 'template' has no default font. The theme (which is what contains all the formatting) has object styles for everything: different caption types, shapes...

Could you give more details? I cannot reproduce your problem, maybe post a screenshot?

Lilybiri

[Wency777]

Hi, I am not sure if you were successful in finding out how to do this. I am posting an answer in case anyone has the same problem.

I copied the text I was supposed to past in captivate and pasted it in a notepad. Copied it again from the notepad and pasted it in captivate. Voila! That did the trick.

[Lilybiri]

Thanks for posting your answer. As with any design tool that has object styles -  and Captivate has a good Object Style Manager - it is good practice to use only non-formatted text when copy/paste to Captivate. You can also export non-formatted text in other ways than using Notepad of course.

Each theme comes with object styles, master slides and a skin. So often users even ignore the Object Style Manager which should be the first step before creating any project.