How do I keep my text formating when pasting from other InDesign files?

[Guest]

I'm trying to post charts from one InDesign file to another.  The chart I'm trying to paste has hand-made fractions in them. The font is superscript and baseline shifted. When I paste it into a new document, the text loses all that formatting. It seems like a preferance thing, but I can't find it.

[TrishMeyer99]

Having the same issue with CS6 on Mac. I made an ad based on Basic Paragraph, and just styled each line separately since it wasn't worth making a style for each separate line.

But when I copy and paste the information into another ID document, the styles are reset to using whatever Basic Paragraph is in the destination document. This must be a bug. Surely Copy and Paste should always preserve formatting unless you do something to remove it?

The only way I've found to fix it is to click on each line in the ad and make a new style (just "ad1", "ad2" etc will work). Then when I copy and paste the lines of styled text, the formatting is pasted correctly. (So manual editing of Basic Paragraph seems to be the issue.)

Alternate: If the copy has "no style" then it also seems to copy and paste ok. So if I delete "ad1" and "ad2" etc and replace those styles with "No paragraph style" (with Preserve Formatting enabled), then when I copy this unformatted text and paste it, the formatting is intact. But there doesn't seem to be a way to select a bunch of manually edited text and say "no style", is there?

[Peter Spier]

>This must be a bug. Surely Copy and Paste should always preserve formatting unless you do something to remove it?

Quite the opposite. It's as designed and expected behavior. When moving content from one file to another, the styles in the receiving document, if named the same, ALWAYS override and control the formatting. The same thing happens with object and character styles, and with master pages if you move pages from one file to another.

[TrishMeyer99]

Then if it's as designed, there should be a way to "preserve" the manual formatting of the pasted text. Where is this option? How does one take a block of text that has been carefully formatted and paste it into a another document - without wasting valuable time reformatting it?

If this is "as designed' then there should be a way to override this behavior. Otherwise, this is really lame behavior to not give one the choice. Both Quark and Word will assume you want to preserve the formatting. Since it's so easy to convert text back to the original style and remove manual formatting, and quite onerous to re-style the text, the onus should be on preserving the text OR allowing a "special paste" option. As I said, really lame behavior.

[Peter Spier]

Trish, Crish Design wrote:

Then if it's as designed, there should be a way to "preserve" the manual formatting of the pasted text. Where is this option? How does one take a block of text that has been carefully formatted and paste it into a another document - without wasting valuable time reformatting it?

You do one of three things:

Don't base any style on Basic Paragraph and make sure that all of the styles have unique names that are not shared between documents.

Make sure that any styles that have the same sames have the same definitions.

Or select the text in the first document and from the Paragraph Styles menu select Break Link to Styles.

[TrishMeyer99]

Thanks Peter, the "Break Link to Style" works. That answered my original question.

I still think there should be a Paste Special option. Much more intuitive.

[jouelrie]

Totally agree. I struggle with this as I end up doing multiple versions of the same document in different fonts. Even breaking link to styles did not work for me. Often 2 of us are doing the same project so I cannot coordinate us doing different names for our style sheets. I can never combine the different type solutions to one document. It erases everything that was styled differently. Ive had to drop pdfs into the doc instead as I can't get it to paste holding the change of style. Oh, I'm working in 5.5

[Peter Spier]

Styles are preserved when you place .indd files. I don't know exactly what you are doing, so I don't know why you want to paste, but if placing a PDF will work, placing the original .indd file will work as well. For things like ads I always lay them out first as an individual document, then palce that into the larger page. It's easy, does what you want, and allows more people to work on the project at the same time.

[jouelrie]

Placing the indd reverts it to the styling done in that document. The pdf is the only thing that preserves the change of font. Similar to having a selection that over rides the previous styling because it's a pdf I'm dropping in. I wish I could just past with an over ride of styles existing in the document I'm pasting into.

I often have to do this to pick up and combine someone else's work for presentation. Yes I could keep then all separate I guess, but I'd like to keep it in one document to print once.

[Peter Spier]

jouelrie wrote:

Placing the indd reverts it to the styling done in that document.

I'm sorry, but that is not correct. In the screen shot below I have placed a page where I used 18 pt Bickham Script Pro in Basic Paragraph. In the frame below it is the same text, copied and pasted into the page using the Basic Paragraph style inthis document. I thing you can see the placed page preserved the original format.

[jouelrie]

I am speaking of a document that was styled. Not in basic paragraph. Pasting into another document which was also styled, not in basic paragraph. Say I use one basic style sheet for these forms, then someone else takes my doc and just changes the font in each style sheet to see it in different fonts. Then we want to paste them in one doc to present and compare. I want to over ride the existing style and paste without it changing.

[Peter Spier]

You are not understanding what I have said. Don't PASTE the content. Build the ads as individual .indd files and save them. Then PLACE, not paste, those .indd pages into the other file. The result is the same as placing a PDF, except you can skip the step of exporting the PDF file, and if you need to edit the original ad you can do so and just update the link.

It doesn't matter what the style names are. I used Basic Paragraph in my example becasue every file has it and it's a common cause of formatting changes when pasting. I could have used a style named Demonstration Paragraph Style in both documents and it would work the same.

[jouelrie]

Wow, thank you. I have never used "place" for an entire indd. I have always pasted and guess use the term too loosely interchanging the term with placed. I've learned something new today and I thank you again.

[Peter Spier]

Once you get used to this workflow I think you'll find it's very fast, and easier to keep up to date. Like any link, you can use the same .indd file as a link in many other layouts and make the revisions in one place instead of having to go find all the places that you might have pasted things.

[TrishMeyer99]

Even if Placing an .indd file retains the formatting, it's a non-starter. The reason I needed to paste the formatted text in the first place was to create a variation of the ad for a different purpose, so I need to be able to edit the text - something you can't do with a placed file. 

For instance, I created an ad for an exhibit that includes the date of the reception and the address of the museum, etc. Then I want to create a poster for the wall of the exhibit, so I create a new document with different specs. Placing the ad copy would serve no use since I have to edit the copy (removing the address and reception date) and then readjust the emphasis of each line slightly.

Then I created another new file (RGB, tall and skinny) for the email invite. So I needed to copy the ad copy  and again put emphasis in different places.

I hope you can see that there is a real need to be able to copy and paste manually formatted text from one document to another while retaining the special formatting. In these kinds of jobs there is no need to create a new style for each line of text since each line is tweaked and tweaked to death.

This copy & paste behavior is not intuitive and is obviously causing problems for users for no  reason whatsoever except that "Adobe knows best". Why can't Adobe trust that I knew what I was going when I applied the formatting in the first place?

Considering how easy it it to remove formatting and revert to the original style, I would say the nod should be given to retaining formatting upon pasting. Both Word and Quark do this, so it's not anything unusual. Or give us the choice with a Paste Special dialog. But saying this behavior is "as designed" or suggesting you need to place a file or PDF, is not the solution.

[jouelrie]

I was actually going to add that it still would be nice to be able to edit right there in the document. In your example it really WOULD help. I do agree over-riding is a pretty crucial option to have.

[Peter Spier]

jouelrie wrote:

I was actually going to add that it still would be nice to be able to edit right there in the document. In your example it really WOULD help. I do agree over-riding is a pretty crucial option to have.

Yes, it would be nice, but given the choice of how much work it is to guarantee that the styles are preserved when you paste as opposed to opeing the original file and making the edit, even saving as a new version, I'll stick with placing. I no longer paste paths from Illustrator, either. I got burned once too often trying to repurpose a client asset when I though originally it would be so nice to be able to edit the paths directly in ID. I wound up making the same changes over and over in multiple files.

[Redpin_Design]

We are using a php flatplan for our publications and when copying text from it to indesign 5.5 it looses all of its text formatting bold etc, is there any way of keeping that or do you know if indesign 6 allows for keeping text formatting from said php flatplan

thanks

[Peter Spier]

answered in http://forums.adobe.com/message/6243544

[Peter Spier]

Trish, Crish Design wrote:

Even if Placing an .indd file retains the formatting, it's a non-starter. The reason I needed to paste the formatted text in the first place was to create a variation of the ad for a different purpose, so I need to be able to edit the text - something you can't do with a placed file. 

That's true. It's not a workflow that is universally usable.

You should file a feature request to have your "paste special" added as an option: Adobe - Feature Request/Bug Report Form

[PwrtothePpl]

Was having the same issue. Break link to style worked beautifully, when pasting into a new document and preserving the formatting. I've used it within the doc before but never for this particular thing. Thanks for the tip!

You've been a fabulous resource. ( :

[Prashant Bhatnagar]

Havent read all of this friends (my apologies if already posted), but you could try exporting indesign snippet and then import in the target document.

[franboud]

I found the solution : before pasting your text in the new document, import the styles of the first document in the new one. You can do that with "Load All Text Styles..." in the dropdown of the Paragraph Styles panel.

Formatting is 100% good now!

[higx13]

You can load styles from other indd-document. You´ll find Load Styles commands from menus of Style Panels.

If you want to load Paragraph Styles,

1) open Paragraph Styles panel,

2) choose Load Paragraph styles (or All Text Styles) from panel menu, file choosing window opens.

3) Choose indd-file that has styles you want to load, and click OK.

4) After that you will have a list of all styles in that document, you can choose which styles you want to load at this point. When you hit OK again, you will have all the chosen styles in your current document.

[queenfantabulous]

I just had this problem and then I couldn't changed the text to any font and I thought I was losing my mind... until I selected it all, went to the Character style palette, click 'None' - and bang-o! my formatting was back. I am not sure why this fixed it as nothing was using a character style from the other doc... but it's a weird bug.

[TrishMeyer99]

I was right there with you a while back. I think it's an issue because the Character Style is selected in the document that you are pasting to, from copying from.  I try to check that a Character Style is not selected now when I paste.