Pasting text to replace a selected paragraph wipes out the existing paragraph style

[MAURICE5EDC]

I'm hoping someone can explain to me why this is happening:

1. Apply a paragraph style to a paragraph
2. Select the paragraph by clicking four times
3. Copy text from any source
4. Paste in InDesign. The pasted text replaces the selected paragraph and the paragraph style is lost, replaced with Basic Paragraph. 

If instead of clicking four times to select the paragraph, I carefully select the paragraph leaving out the pilcrow paragraph symbol, then the paragraph is replaced with the incoming text but the paragraph style is retained.

Is there a way to avoid the time-consuming selection? Is there a reason why this is the behavior (pasted text over selected paragraph changing the paragraph's style)?

Just so everyone knows, what I'm doing is copying text from a PDF and pasting into an InDesign template that's been set up with dummy copy that has paragraph styles applied. Maybe there's a better way to handle that but I thought it was strange that I can't simply select a paragraph and expect pasted text to retain the style.

Thanks for your help!

[James Gifford—NitroPress · Accepted solution]

Use Ctrl-Shift-V or right-click, 'Paste Without Formatting'. That will force ID to use the existing style.

As you might have begun to figure out, paragraph styles "live" in the pilcrow. 🙂

This is, by the way, an essential skill in Word. Using the various paste options can save hours of headaches with unwanted styles, format overrides, confusion and fragile content. ID is a little better but knowing how to paste without dragging a garbage scow of unwanted elements is very useful.

[MAURICE5EDC]

Thanks James! Unfortunately Paste Without Formatting is grayed out for me. Also, type that I paste in isn't coming in with a style.

Even if I use TextEdit to make sure I'm copying plain text, the behavior is the same. It doesn't replace the existing style, it deletes it and sort of reverts to Basic Paragraph. As you point out, the pilcrow is the key--maybe there isn't a way to easily select an entire paragraph and replace.

[Robert at ID-Tasker]

Like @James Gifford—NitroPress said - Ctrl+Shift+V is the best way - if it's not working for you then there is something wrong with your InDesign - maybe try to trash preferences?? 

[James Gifford—NitroPress]

Huh. You're right. I have never seen the option disappear before with outside content. Sorry for the misdirection.

However, I am not experiencing your base problem: pasting over an entire paragraph, pilcrow included, applies the ID style to the new material, and deletes the ID pilcrow even though the complete paragraph was copied from Word.

I think something has changed in paste behavior, but brief experimentation isn't showing me what...

[Barb Binder]

Paste without formatting should be the correct answer. Here is a visual representation: copying from Word, pasting into InDesign, retaining the style.

~Barb

[Eugene Tyson]

Do you have a blank paragraph space after the pilcrow? Is that Paragraph Style set to Basic?

It's hard to know without seeing as screenshot. 

But - it would be taking on the paragraph style of the blank carriage return - which I would say is normal enough behaviour. 

If you have blank paragraph spaces (carriage returns/pilcrows) - then I'd advise not to do this - and instead use the Space Before and Space After for paragraph spacing rather than blank returns (carriages/pilcrows).

Here I have a paragraph style - Basic as a return

Selecting the text with 4 clicks

Paste without formatting is greyed out

Pasting using CTL SHIFT V (CMD SHIFT V on mac)

It inherits the Basic Paragraph Style

[Robert at ID-Tasker]

Not sure if it should be a "normal" behaviour - rather a glitch... pasted text should get formatting from the first element(s) - not the last...

Can't check right now - replying from my phone - but in earlier versions of the InDesign, when pasting text - or maybe it was through scripting - new text was replaced character-by-character so when there was some different/local formatting inside the block of text - you would end up with some random words / letters using this formatting 😉 

[Eugene Tyson]

Yeh same thing happens if you do it with text styled in say bold before. Perhaps a bullet. Or text then tab of space or tab is also bold. It grabs the info before or after to use.

It sure is annoying behaviour and been like that for a while 

[MAURICE5EDC]

Everyone,

Firstly, thank you for the attention to my little issue.

@AdobeScripts—I reset the preferences using the startup key combination, but the behavior still is there.

@James Gifford—I don’t know if it was there before, but now there is a Clipboard Handling preferences pane where you can choose how ID handles pasted text. The default appears to be Text Only, and that’s why paste as unformatted is grayed out.

@Barb Binder—Thanks for the GIF, that is what I expect to happen, it’s just not happening for me. I’ll upload a GIF of my experience.

@eugene Tyson—You’ll see in the GIF, there’s no space after the pilcrow and the paragraph style name is the default ‘Paragraph Style 1’. It seems like your behavior is exactly what I’m seeing. If you paste copy over a paragraph with an assigned style, shouldn’t the new text inherit the assigned style and not Basic Paragraph?

@AdobeScripts—I thought about mixed up local formatting too. You’ll see in the GIF example that I made sure it’s happening even when everything is ‘clean’, no local formatting.

Thanks again everyone!

[James Gifford—NitroPress]

I don’t know if it was there before, but now there is a Clipboard Handling preferences pane where you can choose how ID handles pasted text. The default appears to be Text Only, and that’s why paste as unformatted is grayed out.

Aha. I am suspecting that this feature has been changed with the new 2023 features for copy and paste and so forth.

Some experimentation last night showed that pasting material in from outside souces is not behaving as it did, although I am working from experience/memory as it's not something I had ever fully 'mapped out' in a work flow.

Paste always brought its own formatting, and would override a paragraph style if the existing pilcrow was overwritten, and paste-without-formatting always pasted the new content with no style except the base paragraph style at the point of insertion. All that seems to have changed, and paste-without-formatting is no longer available for outside material, at least by default.

And yep, this is all completely new (to me), and the defaults are different from what I have come to expect:

[MAURICE5EDC]

Agreed, although Barb Binder's experience looks like the expected behavior--is that something that can be set in preferences somehow?

[James Gifford—NitroPress]

Barb's example is what I generally have expected, with control of the paragraph style "held" by the pilcrow. It seems that if the new preference is set to "include all information" from the copied text, everything would behave as before. I find it useful to have text-paste-only as an option and a default, but I can see how it might confuse someone expecting formatted text to paste.

[Robert at ID-Tasker]

The option how to handle text from clipboard isn't new. 

[James Gifford—NitroPress]

I must not have ever noticed it. However, I think the default has been changed, if not in 2023, then quite recently.

I did a project no more than 2 months ago where there was substantial (tedious) pasting in from outside sources, and it was a hassle to find the right combination of pasting plus format/no format. The default behavior is different now. I suggest the fancy-dancy new copy and paste features are responsible, even if it's only a  change in the default.

[MAURICE5EDC · Accepted solution]

I have the answer to this from another forum. When you select a paragraph including the pilcrow, the next thing you type or paste will take on the style of the following paragraph. That's why both my GIF and Barb Binder's GIF are both correct. The following paragraph in her example had the same style as the selected paragraph so it looked fine. In my example the following paragraph had no style and so the new text got Basic Paragraph.

Thanks again for everyone's attention to this admittedly not very important post 🙂

[James Gifford—NitroPress]

Nice detail. And this is a small point in ID use, but I wouldn't call it unimportant to have complete clarity on how it all works.

I note that if you paste multiple paragraphs in over a pilcrow, all of them take on the style of that next paragraph. Interesting.

[Eugene Tyson]

I said this earlier. 

[Barb Binder]

Wow! Thank you so much for coming back to tell us that. I'm sure that must have happened to me along the way but it didn't register as how it works and I just fixed it and moved on.

~Barb

[Eugene Tyson]

I said this and posted examples of the same thing as you found out elsewhere? 

It was just my paragraph was blank - but doesn't make a difference if it has text or not. 

[James Gifford—NitroPress]

Credit to you for that first post. It's all too often that something gets overlooked until another poster restates it.

The nuances of exactly what replaces what, and when, is not something I have ever had fully sorted out before. That makes this a great thread — that and discovering the control of the paste options and what seems to be a recent change in the default.

So thanks to ALL who posted pieces of this little puzzle.

[MAURICE5EDC]

Well said James, and thanks Eugene!

[Barb Binder]

@Eugene Tyson:

As I went back and read your post more carefully, I can see that you did. Perhaps I needed the emphasis that @MAURICE5EDC added to his response for it to sink in. 

~Barb

[NStaal]

This answer is correct, paste will take on the style of the following paragraph if all text + the pilcrow are selected—but can anyone confirm why it is designed this way?

I find this extremely odd and annoying.

My expectation is that it would keep the paragraph style of the text i'm replacing, especially since the style lives in the pilcrow. (It does if you select and replace all text except the pilcrow, but if you include the pilcrow it picks up the next style.) Not selecting and styling the pilcrow can cause unexpected results (for instance, if the pilcrow has additional space after set, the entire paragraph will use the pilcrow's space after setting).

[Mike Witherell]

Hi N,

This is an example of something being so logical so as to lack a human expectation.

The under-trained human user has a hard time appreciating that he/she should should not also select the pilcrow if you want to paste into the same styled hard return. It is made worse for the human user in that they often cannot see the hard return selected. 4-clicking the Type tool always selects the pilcrow hard return, whether noticed/seen or not.