If you’re interested in automating the Word to WordPress copy/paste problem, check out the TinyMCE PowerPaste for WordPress page for more information. Most importantly, your site design won’t get messed up with weird fonts and headings. In a sense, it’s like typing directly into the editor but with all the benefits that come from using Word. What PowerPaste does is automatically remove Word’s inline styles (the cause of the problem in the first place), leaving valid HTML behind. It’s a little like a productivity secret weapon in their workflow.
The solution is called PowerPaste, and it has been used by content professionals around the world for years. The same company that builds the TinyMCE editor in WordPress makes a plugin that does this for you.
Unlike the first two options, which require a lot of manual effort, expertise and time, the third option is to use WordPress plugins that automate the cleaning of your Word content. Just like manually cleaning the HTML takes a lot of effort, you’ll also need to set aside time in your schedule to manually add all your styles as well as recreate website links. The biggest issue is that any formatting you had in Word (bold, italics, headings, links) is discarded by the plain text editor, and therefore won’t appear in WordPress. Basically, a two-step copy/paste process.įor most people, this is an easier task than manually cleaning HTML in WordPress, but it also has some disadvantages. If you don’t have HTML knowledge, your second option is to copy your content from Word into a plain text editor-such as Notepad on Windows or Notes on OSX-and from there copy/paste it into WordPress. Plus you need to have a basic knowledge of HTML. If you have ever had to do this before you know it can be a slow and tedious process, so be patient. Once in text mode, you will see a lot of extra HTML that you now need to remove. This mode lets you change the HTML hidden by the visual editor, which you access by selecting the “text” editing tab at the top of the editor window area. To manually clean your content you first need to switch to WordPress “text editing” mode. You are probably familiar with your text looking different when you press the bold or italics buttons or using headings to change font size. By default, WordPress uses a “visual editor” mode, which behaves like Word. To do this, you need to change your editing mode in WordPress. That is, to go into the HTML and remove Word’s inline styles. The first option is to clean your content manually.
This forgetfulness is caused by what software developers call “inline styles.” You can’t see them in the visual editor, but they’re important because they force your text to look the way Word wants, not WordPress.įortunately, you have a few options to prevent this additional HTML code being imported into WordPress, making it possible to fix this annoying problem.
The reason for this is that in the copy/paste process, Word includes a lot of extra HTML that makes WordPress “forget” your theme settings. However if you are totally new to computers and have no idea how to copy and paste, please see this video. Somewhere in the process of copying and pasting content, the format of your site starts to look like a mess. Yes, you / me / we will have to invest some time and effort but the time and effort will be ever so much less than the "old school" method (trust me here - I've done "old school").If you use Microsoft Word for writing and WordPress for publishing, you already know they are not very compatible. Follow the same instructions in Way 1 to select the item you want to copy and paste. You can use the toolbar to perform the cut, copy and paste action.
Of course we have to have good software and know how to use it to process these outputs.Īfter some work we have our new, master authoring file from which we can create PDF, send to the printer, etc. Some programs on Windows 10 like Word have the top toolbar that offers Copy, Cut and Paste icons. Then you would have placed the artwork into the master authoring file.Īfter lotsa - losta time you'd have had a completed master authoring file with which you could do lotsa of stuff eh.īUT! Today we have the good fortune of Acrobat XI which helps in a big way to migrate content into Word (the text) and to save out the images (with minimal adverse impact on the artwork quality). You would have had to juggle (a lot) with an image editor and perhaps a scanner to get the images ("artword") setup. You would have had to transcribe the text into this new file. Then you would create a new file with a word processor or page layout application.
Old school would have required that you print the PDF to paper. Alas! There is no Harry Potter wand of software that will do all the work.