Paste text

You can copy or cut text from a file in Microsoft Expression Web or another program and paste the text into a document in Expression Web. Depending on the paste method that you use, you can retain the formatting of the original text, remove the formatting, and control line breaking.

You can paste copied text into a web page by using either the Paste or the Paste Text command on the Edit menu. Both methods provide you with options to control how the pasted text is formatted. The options provided by the Paste command give you control over the style of the pasted text. The options provided by the Paste Text command let you control how to treat line breaks and white space from the original source, and remove all styles from the pasted text no matter which option you select for it.

When you use the Paste command on the Edit menu or press CTRL+V to paste text in the Design view of a web page, the Paste Options button appears near the pasted content. When you click the Paste Options button, a list appears that lets you set the appearance of the content you are pasting. The available options depend on the program from which you copied the text and the format of the text where you are pasting.

Tip

To prevent the Paste Options button from appearing in Design view when you use the Paste command, on the Tools menu, click Page Editor Options, and then, on the General tab, under Cut and Paste Options, clear the Show Paste Options buttons option.

Paste Options shortcut menu options

Select this	To do this
Keep Source Formatting	Preserve the style formatting of the source document, regardless of the styles in the current Expression Web document. For example, if you copy Heading 2 text from a Microsoft Word document and paste it into a page in Expression Web, selecting Keep Source Formatting ensures that the Word Heading 2 style is applied. This is useful if Heading 2 is formatted differently in the two programs and you want to keep the Word formatting.
Remove Formatting	Use this option to remove all formatting, and paste the selection as plain text.
Keep HTML Only	Use this option when you want Expression Web to render rather than display HTML tags. For example, if you copy an example of HTML code from a web browser (such as <i>text</i>) to a page in Expression Web, selecting Keep HTML Only ensures that the example code is rendered as italic text.
Keep Text Only	Use this option to remove all formatting, and paste the selection as plain text and set options in the Paste Text dialog box to control line breaking and white space. See the next table in the current topic for more information.

Paste Text dialog box options

Select this	To do this
Plain text	Remove all formatting, replace line breaks with spaces, and paste the selection as plain text.
One <pre> formatted paragraph	Paste the text into a preformatted text tag set (<pre></pre>), which maintains all line breaks in the text.
Many <pre> formatted paragraphs	Paste each paragraph of text into a preformatted text tag set (<pre></pre>), which maintains all line breaks in the original text.
Normal paragraphs with line breaks	Paste the text into a paragraph tag set (<p></p>) and insert a line break tag (<br>) wherever a line break occurs in the original text.
Normal paragraphs without line breaks	Paste the text into a paragraph tag set (<p></p>) and remove all line breaks.

See also

Tasks

Insert symbols
Edit multiple pages with find and replace

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