Text pasted from Microsoft Word or other sources can have embedded formatting. Removing the formatting is straightforward.
Formatting includes font, font size, bold, italics underline, background color, font color and any table formatting.
Fix before importing
From within the word processor, save the file as Text Only. From that file, copy and paste into EncaptureMD. If formatting needs to be added back in, do that after the text is imported into EncaptureMD using the Advanced editors (see below)
Use the Advanced Editor
This is what it looks like when formatted text gets pasted into a text area. Depending on the formatting of your text, things may look different than this example, but the solution is the same.
(1) Click the </> icon to open the advanced editor
(1) click and drag to select all the text or click <CTRL> A to select all
(2) click the Tx button which removes all formatting.
The text is still selected in this example, but you can see the formatting has been removed. Paragraphs may be removed as well so returns will need to be added to restore them. (1) Close the advanced editor to continue working.
There are situations where using this method will not remove all the formatting. If that happens, either Fix before Importing or Edit the HTML.
Edit the HTML (Advanced users only)
NOTE: This method requires knowledge of HTML to be effective. If you are not familiar with HTML, do not attempt this method.
From the Advanced editor, click (1) the <> Source Code button on the toolbar:
Discussing all possible HTML formatting variants is beyond the scope of this article, but we will cover a few elements that can cause problems within EncaptureMD.
- Classes - Word may add classes to its documents. A class is part of CSS which is part of HTML that controls style. EncaptureMD uses its own classes. EncaptureMD is unlikely to recognize imported classes and they should be deleted. , e.g. edit <h1 class="someclass"> to just <h1>.
- Header tags - EncaptureMD uses header tags to control how headers and paragraphs are formed in the report. If <h> tags appear in blocks of text, they may affect report formatting. The safest option is to remove the <h> tags and instead use a <strong> tag to make that text bold, e.g convert <h1 >HTML Ipsum Presents</h1> into <strong>HTML Ipsum Presents</strong><br />
- <ol> and <ul> tags can be used successfully to create lists.
- <p> tags will work to create a paragraph structure. Make sure the <p> and </p> tags are present at the beginning and end of the paragraph.
When all else fails
If none of the methods above work, instead of copy and paste, just type the text into the EncaptureMD Advanced editor. Any formatting added there will work correctly within our product.