Inspiring

Answered

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

Forum|Forum|3 years ago
October 25, 2022
5 replies
3726 views

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

Apply a paragraph style to a paragraph
Select the paragraph by clicking four times
Copy text from any source
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!

Type

Correct answer MAURICE5EDC

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 🙂

M

MAURICE5EDCAuthorCorrect answer

Inspiring

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 🙂

E

Eugene Tyson

Community Expert

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.

Barb Binder

Community Expert

@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

~Barb at Rocky Mountain Training

M

MAURICE5EDCAuthor

Inspiring

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.

@2212081 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

Legend

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:

M

MAURICE5EDCAuthor

Inspiring

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

E

Eugene Tyson

Community Expert

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

Legend

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 😉

E

Eugene Tyson

Community Expert

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

Barb Binder

Community Expert

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

~Barb

~Barb at Rocky Mountain Training

James Gifford—NitroPress

Legend

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.

M

MAURICE5EDCAuthor

Inspiring

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

Legend

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??

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