Copy paste from OneNote

[Fabien32657226tm3b]

Hello everyone,

I'm copying texts from Microsoft OneNote into Indesign. On Mac, the text pasted is automatically one single paragraph, even when there are multiple ones in the OneNote document.

I've tried on on a Windows version of Indesign and the paragraphs are correctly pasted as separate ones.

Is this a specifity of my setup or is there a workaround?

Thanks for your help!

[Laubender]

Hi @Fabien32657226tm3b ,

a workaround ( that I did not test ) could be to copy/paste into a TextEdit document and then copy again and finally paste to InDesign.

Regards,
Uwe Laubender
( Adobe Community Expert )

[Fabien32657226tm3b]

Hi, thanks for your reply! It works well, but do you know if there would be a setting to avoid using another software?

[Laubender]

@Fabien32657226tm3b said: "It works well, but do you know if there would be a setting to avoid using another software?"

Sorry. No idea why this happens and how to avoid it.

Regards,
Uwe Laubender
( Adobe Community Expert )

[Robert at ID-Tasker]

What if you first paste your text into some kind of Notepad - I'm not Mac user. 

[Fabien32657226tm3b]

Hi Robert, thanks for your reply! Same question as for the previous answer: it works well, but do you know if there would be a setting to avoid using another software?

[Robert at ID-Tasker]

Hi Robert, thanks for your reply! Same question as for the previous answer: it works well, but do you know if there would be a setting to avoid using another software?

By @Fabien32657226tm3b

Sorry, I'm not a Mac user.

[leo.r]

I'm copying texts from Microsoft OneNote into Indesign. On Mac, the text pasted is automatically one single paragraph, even when there are multiple ones in the OneNote document.

By @Fabien32657226tm3b

Interesting. I can't reproduce it. Copying from OneNote to InDesign 19.4 here on macOS 13.6: paragraphs remain intact in InDesign (any way I paste the text).

Have you tried to Paste without Formatting, Cmd-Shift-V? 

Also, check your text in an app that shows invisible characters, such as BBEdit. Is it possible that paragraph returns are entered in an unconventional way?

EDIT: In my case, paragraphs are relaced by soft returns when pasting from OneNote to InDesign. So while the line breaks are preserved, technically the text does turn into a single paragraph.

[Barb Binder]

Hi Fabien:

TBH, I had never heard of Microsoft OneNote, but turns out it was installed on my Mac (!!) so I was able to test this. I copied your question into OneNote:

Selected it and copy/pasted it into InDesign. I see that there is a non-breaking space where the ¶s were so you can leverage that . 

Edit > Find/Change

Find: ^S

Replace: ^p

~Barb

[leo.r]

@Barb Binder 

Oops I was kinda wrong.

Only in my case there are soft returns instead of paragraphs, so I assumed paragraphs are preserved because the line breaks are preserved.

Still, it's different from what you get, as in your case line breaks are totally removed. (I guess that's the case for the OP too.)

I have the same behavior on both macOS 13 Ventura and 15 Sequoia beta (don't have Sonoma installed right now).

[Barb Binder]

@leo.r posted while I was typing... I'm on Ventura 14.5 so maybe this is a Ventura issue since it wasn't happening for him on the earlier macOS? 

And while I'm back, you can save this query by clicking the down arrow/rectangle button on the top row, and then choose it from the query menu so that it is easy to run. 

~Barb

[Fabien32657226tm3b]

Hi@leo.r & @Barb Binder,

Thanks for your replies!

Cmd-Shift-V doesn't do anything in my Indesign version, Paste without Formatting is not showed in the menu.

Sorry for the lack of detail: I have the same behavior as leo.r, it produces a single paragraph with soft breaks. (on Sonoma)

I created a Find/change query that works well, thank you!

[Laubender · Accepted solution]

@Fabien32657226tm3b said: "…Paste without Formatting is not showed in the menu."

Hi Fabien,

that's always the case if you copy/paste text not from InDesign and your preferences in InDesign are set for plain unformatted text when you paste text (which is the default for this setting).

Regards,
Uwe Laubender
( Adobe Community Expert )

[Laubender]

That said, I would temporarily change the preferences to insert formatted text when pasting.

Let's see what happens then.

Regards,
Uwe Laubender
( Adobe Community Expert )

[Robert at ID-Tasker]

That said, I would temporarily change the preferences to insert formatted text when pasting.

Let's see what happens then.

By @Laubender

I don't think it will affect "end line encoding"? 

[Fabien32657226tm3b]

Hi,

I changed the setting to paste formatted text. It does keep the paragraph breaks, but also logically the styles of the origin.

But fortunately once this setting is on, using Cmd+Shift+V does the job: the text get pasted unformatted but this time with to correct paragraph breaks!

Thanks for your help!

[Barb Binder]

And this is the difference between @leo.r and @Fabien32657226tm3b's experience and mine, Uwe. :up_arrow:

Set it to Text Only and it pastes from OneNote with two line breaks/soft returns. 

Change it to All Information and it pastes with one non-breaking space.

Either way, a F/C query solves it quickly. 😊

~Barb