Quad-click paste removes paragraph style in InDesign

[Ibo Vis]

As part of my work I do allot of text replacements inside indesign documents for tranlation purposes. I open a tranlated ms-word document and copy - paste it into indesign. Doing this I need to be really carefull not end up with the paragraph style of a neighboring paragraph when pasting. Even using the ugly story editor does not fixe this issue. Only click-drag selecting making sure not to include the paragraph marker does. This is such a waste of time. Should developers fix this? I wish they would make quad-click paste hassle-free in indesign.

[rob day]

Hi @Ibo Vis , Unless I’m misunderstanding your post, setting the entire paragraph as a selection might be scriptable. Something like this would get the selction’s (insertion point, word, line, etc.) first paragraph. Assign the script a key command:

var s = app.activeDocument.selection[0]
if (s.hasOwnProperty("paragraphs")) {
	app.select(s.paragraphs[0],SelectionOptions.replaceWith)
} 

Run script

[Ibo Vis]

I think you are amazing, also adobe should be ashamed for forcing their customers to come up with hacks like this to make it function propperly.  Thank you so much! I mighty try your solution. Like I said, "hassle-free". 

[rob day]

Just realized that the script gets the entire paragraph including the return—I think you don’t want the return included? If that’s the case then try this. Don’t think scripting is a hack—it’s part of the application.

var s = app.activeDocument.selection[0]
if (s.hasOwnProperty("paragraphs")) {
	app.select(s.paragraphs[0].insertionPoints[0],SelectionOptions.REPLACE_WITH)
    app.select(s.paragraphs[0].words[-1],SelectionOptions.ADD_TO)
}

Does not select the return:

[Joel Cherney]

I think you are amazing, also adobe should be ashamed for forcing their customers to come up with hacks like this to make it function propperly.  Thank you so much! I mighty try your solution. Like I said, "hassle-free". 

By @Ibo Vis

Like Rob, I don't think of scripting things in InDesign as a hack. InDesign is Functioning As Designed, here. Some people - lots of people! - have workflows that don't necessarily map neatly onto what the InDesign developers have written, over the last few decades, and so accordingly there is a facility to extend InDesign's abilities beyond what shipped with the application. That facility is built in, at the factory, and has been since the beginning. This is not a hack.

That being said, have you considered using a different translation environment? The "should developers fix this?" question you're asking was answered a long time ago - decades - by third-party developers writing tools for the translation industry. The workflow you're using (translate in Word, copy/paste into InDesign) is clumsy & risky.

Even if you're not going to go and purchase a license for some kind of industry-standard tool, there are numerous workflows that require you to spend $0 and yet yield faster turnaround, fewer clicks, and less work. I can't guess as to which one to reccomend to you without knowing more about how you work, but I'd throw out "why are you copying and pasting when you could just be placing Word documents directly into InDesign?" or "have you considered converting docx files into icml using pandoc?" or "if you are getting these Word documents from a translation service, maybe ask 'em if they'd rather get XML from you for assignment, which you could then reimport after translation, having copy/pasted a total of zero times?" How about "just send your translation providers an IDML, which every industry standard translation tool can parse?" Happy to help you figure out a faster, less laborious way to get your text out of & back into InDesign, if you're interested at all. 

[Ibo Vis]

Hi Joel,

I consider copy and pasting text to a basic functionality of using a computer, people expect it to work in a certain way. It does not matter if I am using it to replace translated paragraphs or not. I am fully aware that localisation services and software like CAT tools exist, and that are are many ways to handle translations. I am using this workflow because it best suits my needs in my sitiuation.

I am simply pointing out the fact that quad-clicking a paragraph and pasting to recplace the text messes up the paragraph styling while I feel like we should not expect it to. Other apps that I hold in lower regard that also use paragraph styles do not have this issue. Therefor I see a clear room for improvement in this regard since it is clearly not required behaviour for paragraph styling but an Adobe Indesign behaviour. 

I see you do not agree, but thank you for your opinion and suggestions nonetheless.

[rob day]

A 4x click works as I expect it to—selects the entire paragraph including the paragrah return marker. Is that not what you are getting?

[Ibo Vis]

Hey I get it, it all seems very logical if you don't care about user experience, until you put it into practice and use it to paste replacement text and the selected styling dissapears on you. Seems like InDesign users have been living with this discomfort for so long that they have accepted this for what it is and no longer see the problem. I don't blame you, I was one of you myself for many years, carefully avoiding the paragraph marker when selecting hoping to preserve the paragraph style I want. Until I asked myself if this was normal or even necessary. I saw that it does not need to be like this by testing it out in Word. Not that Word is so great to use but it clearly does this better. But I don't blame you if you don't get it.

[Peter Spier]

Not saying you are wrong here, but curious what your setting in prefs is for Clipboard Handling when pasting text. Is it alll information, or text only? Is the the text tagged with the corect style in Word?

[Ibo Vis]

Hi Peter, 

Text only. In word when I paste unformatted text into lets say a styled header paragraph, the pasted text adopts the applied paragraph style. Even when paragraph marker was selected. 

I'd hate to compare MS-Word to InDesign but. When you try the same thing in InDesign your applied paragraph style dissapears. Probably because logically, the paragraph marker holding the styling info is no longer there. But intuitively this behaviour is not very user friendly.

[Peter Spier]

Well, as we know, InDesign is not Word and the behavior, as designed, when you place text only is to adopt the style applied immediately before the insertion point.

I suspect if you change the preference to all info, presuming the styling is correct in Word, you'll get the behavior you desire, and if you don't want to paste formatted text for some reason you are always able to select Paste without formatting.

[Ibo Vis]

Yeah... I do not want to paste styling from word. I am talking about changing the InDesign behaviour "as designed" so it works more intuitively and speeds up the process of copy-pasting into InDesign. But I feel you do not agree and that is fine.

[Peter Spier]

I neither agree nor disagree, but as a pragmatist and long-time user of tools in a number of professions I think training oneself to use tools as they were designed generally yields better results than using them in sub-optimal ways. When a better tool for the job is avaialble for the way I work I generally choose to aquire and use that tool, but if I'm stuck with somoething that works, but not quite the way I would like I adapt.

[Ibo Vis]

Thanks you for the reminder to adapt myself to the software rather than considering whether the software could improve. I genuinely admire how deeply some long-time users have internalized InDesign’s quirks to the point where longstanding UX friction no longer registers as a problem. That level of acclimation must make it easy to overlook workflows that are unnecessarily slow or error-prone for others. To be clear, I’m not asking for workarounds. I’m aware they exist, and use them. The point is simply that an everyday action like replacing text shouldn’t require scripting, tool-switching, or a mental checklist to avoid losing formatting. It’s great that the current behavior makes sense once you’ve adapted to it, but suggesting that users should change their habits rather than the tool improving is precisely the kind of reasoning that keeps legacy inconveniences in place.

Anyway, thank you for your perspective.

[Peter Spier]

The place to request the kind of change you want, and there's certainly no reason you shouldn'e ask, is at https://indesign.uservoice.com/forums/601021-adobe-indesign-feature-requests

You might also apply for the pre-release program. Testers sometimes have more influence than other users, though it's hardly guaranteed (I lost the battle to save the navigator panel way back around CS3 which to my mind was far more useful than the curent power zoom that "replaces" it).

[rob day]

have internalized InDesign’s quirks

Maybe this is an OS thing? All of the Mac text applications I checked select the paragraph return on a multi-click.

Pages 3X:

[Joel Cherney]

it all seems very logical if you don't care about user experience

<looks around> Nobody in here but us users! <clucks>

Talking down to developers about their UI choices to induce them to change said UI is not a strategy I'd suggest, broadly speaking. Fortunately for you, there aren't any in this forum! If you're trying to get a developer's attention, maybe you're looking for the Uservoice? 

 Seems like InDesign users have been living with this discomfort for so long that they have accepted this for what it is and no longer see the problem. 

I think that the discomfort is in your head. I've been hanging around in the InDesign forums for... a long time, and your post is literally the first I have seen in literal decades where someone is trying to get InDesign to do anything but "select entire paragraph, pilcrow inclusive" with four clicks. It's a hitch to your workflow, sure, but it's only you. Good thing that InDesign is so easily scriptable, so it's easy for someone with a bit of JS knowhow to develop personalized tools to fit all kinds of idiosyncractic workflows. (Or Visual Basic on Windows, or Applescript on the Mac.) 

Of course, over the years many people have experienced (and posted about) the pain point of lost styling information when pasting over a paragraph marker. That's common to every page layout and word processing tool that I can think of. And I'm not sure why you refer to MS Word in this area, but I'm curious as to your version and platform, because the mouse behavior I find in MS Word is:

• Triple click: entire paragraph, paragraph marker included
• Quadruple click: uhh, defaults back to selecting the word under the pointer as if it were a double-double click? Because that's what a quadruple-click does on MS Word 2016 on Win10. 

But no matter what behavior you expect, and no matter what behavior is actually happening as a result of your clicking, there are ways to alter those behaviors to fit your personal workflow better. Back in the era when I had to do a lot of copying and pasting in Word - maybe 2008? - I frequently found myself doing extra work as I was pasting over paragraph markers and getting incorrect local formatting applied as a result. My solution worked just as well with AutoHotkey as it did in VBA - I wrote a little script that would enter keystrokes (home, control-shift-downarrow, shift-leftarrow, control-c) and mapped it to my middle mouse button. That would select and copy the entire paragraph, except for the paragraph marker at the end, with a single click.  Saved me significant numbers of clicks'n'keystrokes.

The point is simply that an everyday action like replacing text shouldn’t require scripting, tool-switching, or a mental checklist to avoid losing formatting. It’s great that the current behavior makes sense once you’ve adapted to it, but suggesting that users should change their habits rather than the tool improving is precisely the kind of reasoning that keeps legacy inconveniences in place.

Um... we're the users? We're sharing what we've learned, over the years, as users. People show up with questions, and we try to answer 'em.  That's what this space is for. That's what the other posters in your thread have tried to do. If you're looking for the best way to communicate your personal take on the state of the tool to the people who influence the development of the tool, then perhaps you are looking for the Uservoice, which is a website where InDesign bug reports and feature requests can be submitted to the developers. 

[Ibo Vis]

Joel, thank you for the dramatic chicken sound effects. Always good to know the level of professionalism we’re working with.

Since you pointed out that there are “only users here,” it’s interesting how confident you are in speaking on behalf of what is or isn’t a valid UX concern. Declaring the issue “in my head” because you personally haven’t seen it in decades is a creative approach to user feedback, but it does neatly illustrate how long-term familiarity can blur the line between “normal” and “needlessly clunky.”

I’m aware I can script around the behavior. I’m also aware that needing scripts, auxiliary tools, or muscle-memory rituals for a basic replace-text action is exactly the kind of friction good software design tries to eliminate. Treating that as a personal quirk rather than a reasonable observation is an interesting choice, but it does highlight the culture I mentioned earlier.

And yes, I know about UserVoice. Simply pointing me there would have been enough. The extra commentary about how no one else has ever mentioned this, or how users should adapt instead of suggesting improvements, says more about the community mindset than the feature itself.

Thanks for confirming where to submit the request. I’ll put it where developers can see it without the forum theatrics.