Problems with formatting when I copy and paste pages from one Pub2010 document to another - please help!

Question

Hi there,

When I copy and past a page from one publisher document to another I lose the formating - for example the text box shrinks when you paste it.

This never used to happen in Publisher 2007.

Here is what I have tried to rectify the problem:

1.  Having the clipboard open/ showing in both documents

2.  Emptying the clipboard before each copy and paste. (not something that needed to be done in previous versions)

I would love to be able to sort this out as it takes lots of time to re-format everything! Thank you so much for your help!

Answer 1

Thanks for doing the experiments and posting back. For some reason MS changed the default settings in text boxs for Pub 2010, but now at least you can copy and paste a page in two steps.

You have figured out how to copy and paste the text boxes and keep the source formatting. Let's make that the second step.

The first step is to copy and paste everything else on the page. To do this first make sure that you have the 'Home tab' selected in the menu and that you can see the 'Group' command under the 'Arrange' group. Then instead of using Ctrl + A or 'Select all' to select everything on the page, starting at the top of your page, hold down the Ctrl key and click/select each individual design element on the page, excluding the text boxes. Once you have clicked/selected all the other elements then 'group' those elements together. You can click the 'group' icon under 'arrange' or you can use the shortcut Ctrl + Shift + G.

Now you can copy and paste that group of elements onto the other page in one step. Then in step two, add the text boxes.

Granted this is not as easy as copying the entire page in one step but it will at least save you the time of copying and pasting each of the non-text box elements and it will help you maintain the layout of the page.

DavidF

Answer 2

When you paste, there is a (Ctrl) paste options icon on the bottom of the pasted text, click on the icon you are given the option of keeping the source formatting.

You should create a text box, with your cursor in the box, paste.

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Mary Sauer http://msauer.mvps.org/

Answer 3

Thank you for your help Mary. I'm not very good at this (obviously!) so what should i do when there are multiple items on the page? (e.g. pictures, text boxes, and tables). I select them all using Ctrl A then copy using Ctrl C and then paste into the new document. Any handy tips for that?

Thank you again

Answer 4

Are you selecting all (Ctrl+A)? Group all the objects, copy then paste?

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Mary Sauer http://msauer.mvps.org/

Answer 5

I select all objects and want to move them from one publisher file to another... i lose the text formatting and still haven't figured out a way to force it to keep the formatting of the source document.  The (Ctrl) paste options doesn't help.  I understand it's because the styles are different in the 2 documents but there should be a simple way around this.