Why is it when I copy and paste into Open Office from the internet into a document, it ends up in some weirdly formatted table?
And how do I make it stop?
Posted by theamazeeaz (Member # 6970) on :
This is probably the wrong place to get advice for this.
Nevertheless:
Firstly, about 6 years ago, I had terrible trouble (forgot exactly what) with their version of powerpoint (Impress) and then I installed the later one and it was fine. So do that.
Is there a "paste special" option in OO.org? It would be in the edit menu, if it doesn't come up when you right click. (I don't have it on this laptop, sorry). If there is, you need to choose the plain text option or the "match destination formatting".
Or you could try pasting the text into a text editor that only accepts plain text. I believe Wordpad is the PC version of what you want that should come with your OS-- haven't use a PC in a while, sorry. TextEdit is the Mac Equivalent. By default, it uses richly formatted text (rtf), press "cmd shift t" to get it into plain text mode. The text editor should strip all its formatting, so then copy it a second time. If you are running Linux, you wouldn't be asking for tech support on a science fiction discussion forum.
I assume you are trying to copy text? An entire webpage isn't going to look right, sorry. It has objects everywhere. You may have to pull out the parts you need in small chunks if everything is in little boxes. The order and what gets included will most likely be not what you expect.
And since it is finals time for college kids, for the love of everything, please do not copy things from the internet and turn it into your professors.
Posted by BlackBlade (Member # 8376) on :
I wish I could be more helpful but I swore off Open Office a long time ago, and with my being back in school MS Office was free through my school.
Posted by Sphinx (Member # 10219) on :
The reason it's doing it is because the default is to paste in HTML format, which includes the weird tables and things. I have no idea how to change it; there's probably a menu somewhere that can handle it, but you'd have to find it.
Ctrl + Shift + V is the OpenOffice (and MSWord, I think) command for Paste Special. You can do the same thing by clicking the dropdown arrow next to the paste button in the toolbar at the top of the screen and then selecting how you want the program to paste. That will let you paste without those boxes/tables/HTML things.
(Apologies if this was no longer necessary)
Posted by CaySedai (Member # 6459) on :
I paste things into Notepad to remove formatting. At work I have to work on obits, and things like superscript "th" on dates like "30th" mess up the lines. So, Notepad takes care of this and I can copy from there and paste into the obits program.
Posted by theamazeeaz (Member # 6970) on :
Aha. Notepad. That's what it's called on a Windows machine.
Posted by docmagik (Member # 1131) on :
Thanks for the help, everybody.
Ctrl + Shift + V is exactly the miracle I was hoping for. Thanks, Sphinx.
Pasting into notepad has always been my work-around, too, but now I have this new stupid windows, and I could start a half a dozen threads on all the stupid things I can't figure out how to do in that, and one of them is open Notepad from the desktop.
Posted by Dan_Frank (Member # 8488) on :
Windows 8?
Google "iobit start 8," download and install. Or any of the competitors. Handy way to restore the start menu to windows 8, and get easy access to accessories, programs, control panel, etc. from the desktop.
Posted by Probot 2.0 (Member # 14146) on :