Lose formatting when copying texts from a Paratext Project note

Question

When a user copies the content of a note and pastes it into another note or into another application like notepad, the pasted text does not contain the formatting, specifically carriage returns used when creating lists.
The immediate context of the request is that a Consultant Trainer is helping a Consultant Trainee. The Trainee creates a note, and the trainer offers guidance. As the initial note is now uneditable, the trainee will copy the content of the note and paste it in the reply box of the same note with the intention of revising the note based upon the guidance. Once they are satisfied with the note, the trainee will then paste the note into the project for the team to see.

The Consultant Trainer says that this will also occur when she wants to copy the content of a project note into a Consultant Notes project.

Is there something we can do to retain the formatting of the note when copying it?

Answer 1

Another Consultant Trainee came to me and showed a similar issue when she copies her note out of Microsoft Word into the Project Notes box. The Note looses all of her formatting (think lists), but also presents the normally hidden formatting text. If I can get a chance to take pictures of what she’s getting I will include it in the note. On my computer, in both Paratext 7.5 and 8, when I copy text out of Word, I lose the formatting when I paste it into the notes box.

Comments

I had the user submitt a problem report, but the process didn’t give a KB number. It just said KB. Many of the people attending this training session are reporting the same problem. I’ve been asking them to submit a problem report as well. I was able to get screen captures of the issue and am going to try to include them in this post
Example of note in Word

image.png842×272 124 KB

What that note looks like when pasting it into the Notes Box

Example of a note that loses it’s formatting when you copy/paste it into another note…That’s the process they are using as they work through the process of Consultant training
original note
what the same note looks like if you copy it from one note and paste it into another. They do this because they create a note and their mentor offers suggestions for improvement. This comment (in the form of a note) prevents them from editing the original note, so they have to create a new one. They want to copy/paste the note and incorporate the improvements.

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MSEAIT/LT:

On my computer, in both Paratext 7.5 and 8, when I copy text out of Word, I lose the formatting when I paste it into the notes box.

Keeping the formatting was proving increasingly difficult because of a bunch of issues with getting data that Paratext couldn’t understand, so we disabled the pasting of formatted text into a note. This includes pasting formatted text that was copied from an existing note.

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Thanks Tom,

The news is going to bring a bit of an ouch to the group as the
Consultant Trainees were instructed last week (going by what I have
observed this week as I wasn’t there) to create a template for notes
that they’d just copy/paste out of Word into Paratext.

I think we found that they could save their files as .txt files and
copy/paste out of that into a Note. I’ll have to try again tomorrow.

The part about copying notes so they can improve them is sort of a
contrived thing that only occurs in training sessions (like having s\r
issues when 30 people in the same room try to do it when the instructor
says now…do a s/r), that I’m not so sure that’s a big deal.

MSEAIT/LT