Tip: Three Ways to Cut and Paste From Word to Wordperfect

Some of us in “Wordperfect shops” are always looking for ways to cut and past from Word to Wordperfect. Yesterday I came across the following tip from Charles T. Lester Jr. He was responding to a question on TechnoLawyer–Answers to Questions http://www.technolawyer.com:

QUESTION:.

“My problem with WordPerfect is that when I cut data from a Word doc and paste it into a WP doc I seem to get equal parts type and Word-inserted codes. Can I accomplish a Word to WP cut and paste without all the garbage? If not, what’s the quickest way to delete all the garbage? Thanks.”

RESPONSE:

Several different ways, all ending up with the same result. (This explanation is done with Word 2003, WordPerfect X3, and Windows XP.) YMMV.

Step 1: Copy the stuff from Word. This is probably preaching to the choir, but to copy, highlight the text you wish to copy, and then do any one of the following five things: (1) right click and select “Copy”; (2) click the copy icon on the toolbar at the top of Word; (3) press the Alt key, type the letter E (for Edit), then type the letter C (for Copy); (4) click “Edit” on the Menu Bar, then click “Copy” in the drop-down menu that appears; or (5) hold down the Ctrl key and type the letter C.

Step 2: Paste the text into WordPerfect. Switch to the WordPerfect window, and one of the following three things: (1) press the Alt key, type the letter E (for Edit), then click “Paste Special”; (2) click Edit on the menu bar at the top of the screen, then click “Paste Special”. In either case, you will get a pop-up box that will ask you how you want to paste it. This may be populated with as few as two, or as many as five or six different options, depending upon the source of the copied text. I usually select “Unformatted Text” to get the result without formatting codes.

I said there were three things you could do. That’s because the third method is usually the easiest, and often the most useful.

The third method is to right click in the WordPerfect window. If you do that, you get a window that pops up with several different paste options: “Paste”, “Paste without Font/Attributes”, and “Paste Unformatted Text”. “Paste Unformatted Text” gets you to the same place that the previously mentioned methods 1 and 2 do, just a bit quicker.

Oftentimes, however, “Paste without Font/Attributes” gets me closer to the result I’m actually looking for: it keeps my current font, but preserves things like hyperlinks and alignment.

Charles T. Lester, Jr.
Attorney at Law P.O. Box 75069
Fort Thomas, KY 41075-0069