Technicalities
By Pamela L. Crosby
If there are any of you who feel as though your growing experiences with today’s technologies are very much like a trip
with Alice down the rabbit hole, this column is for you. Our purpose here is to familiarize you with many of the features
present in today’s technologies that we hope will make your day easier. We invite your comments and suggestions as we focus
on improving skills and gaining new perspectives on technology as it affects a paralegal’s daily tasks.
Despite a (sometimes) bad reputation, word processing programs are really a wonderful innovation! I became an instant
convert the moment I first selected a portion of text from another document, copied it, and then pasted it into my current
document. The cut, copy, and paste feature was especially exciting to me because at that time I was working with an attorney
who specialized in estate planning. I immediately realized that “word processing” meant no more re-typing an entire page of a
will because of one error and we could revise entire sections of a client’s document within minutes using our handy cut,
copy, and paste techniques. As time progressed, the only “fly in my ointment” was the font or paragraph formatting that was
pasted into my document along with the text I wanted… and frequently it was difficult, if not impossible, to be rid of that
formatting! On many occasions I became so frustrated in my efforts to rid my document of those unwanted codes and formatting
that many times I gave up, deleted the text, and typed it in, so I ended up losing a lot of the advantages and time savings I
was hoping to enjoy.
Then came Paste Special.
Paste Special is a context-sensitive tool that allows the user to paste text and graphics into a document in a format
other than its original format. Even more exciting to me was the discovery that Paste Special would allow me to paste text
from another document, spreadsheet, presentation slide, PDF, or even a web page as unformatted text, allowing the inserted
text to assume whatever formatting surrounded the insertion point. Here’s how it works:
Paste One on Me
Select or “block” a section of text from an article on the Internet or from a document that is formatted with a different
font than the one you are currently using, then press [Ctrl+C] to copy the text to the Clipboard. Now follow the instructions
below for the word processing application you use.
The following applies to Microsoft® Office Word® 2003, Corel WordPerfect® 9 (WordPerfect® Office 2000), OpenOffice.org
2.2.1, NeoOffice 2.2.2, and StarOffice™ 8 Writer.
Switch to your Word, WordPerfect, or Writer application, then click on or scroll to the point in your document where you
want to insert your copied text. Using your mouse or keyboard, activate the Edit (dropdown) menu and select Paste Special. A
box with a list of selections will appear in the middle of your screen. Choose unformatted text and click on the OK button.
The text you copied will be inserted using the same format as the surrounding text.
The following applies to Microsoft® Office Word® 2007.
Switch to your Word application; from the Menu Bar, click on Home. On the far left side of the Home “Ribbon” (the Ribbon
is part of Microsoft’s new Office 2007 Fluent User Interface) is a large Paste command button that is separated into two
halves. Click the lower half of the button. (This is the half that has the word “Paste” with an indicator arrow below the
word Paste. The arrow indicates the presence of a dropdown menu). Select Paste Special from the Menu and the Paste Special
dialog box will open with a list of options. Choose Unformatted Text and click the OK button. The text you copied will be
inserted using the same format as the surrounding text.
You can also use this method to remove all formatting from an entire document at once. Select all of the text within
the document [Ctrl+A] then copy [Ctrl+C] the text and use the Paste Special, Unformatted Text options to paste the text –
which is now free of all formatting – into a new, blank document. You can then apply new styles or formatting to the text as
you please. Try experimenting with this technique in other applications, also, such as PowerPoint and Excel. Just remember
that it is context-sensitive, so the list of available options will change according to the contents of the Clipboard (if you
copied text to the Clipboard, the list of options will contain the options for pasting text, but if you’ve copied a graphic
or picture, the options will be those relevant to graphics).
If your interest is piqued and you want to learn more, go to http://pubs.logicalexpressions.com/pub0009/LPMArticle.asp?ID=128
for a great example of how to paste unformatted text and record a macro to reduce it to one step, or to http://pubs.logicalexpressions.com/pub0009/LPMArticle.asp?ID=40,
http://www.mrexcel.com/tip045.shtml, http://www.schooldatatutorials.org/paste_special/, http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/powerpoint/HP101171151033.aspx,
or http://j-walk.com/ss/excel/usertips/tip059.htm for more examples of how to use Paste Special in various Microsoft Office
applications. More information on the Paste Special feature of OpenOffice.org can be found at http://wiki.services.openoffice.org/wiki/Documentation/OOoAuthors_User_Manual/Getting_Started/Cutting_copying_pasting_text
and http://www.openofficetips.com/blog/archives/2005/09/paste_special_i.html. Instructions for writing a one-step Paste
Special macro for the Macintosh can be found at http://word.mvps.org/Mac/PasteText.html. Even applications such as
Dreamweaver 8 have Paste Special commands (see http://www.adobe.com/devnet/dreamweaver/articles/paste_special.html) that help
the user with copy, cut, and paste. Once you become familiar with many of the command options, you will begin searching for
it in every application you use! To find out if a particular application uses it (if you cannot immediately locate the
command) try searching the Internet using the search [application name] paste special.
Taking advantage of the tools available to you is not only smart, it is essential to your success. If you have not already
used the Paste Special feature, try it out. The time you save using it to perform clean additions or a quick revision to a
document might convince you that the time you spent experimenting was worth it and that it was just the assist you needed to
speed along your work flow. And while it may not truly be magic, your attorneys may think your improved productivity is.
Microsoft, Microsoft Office Word, and Entourage are registered trademarks of Microsoft Corporation in the United
States and other countries. Corel and WordPerfect are trademarks or registered trademarks of Corel Corporation and/or its
subsidiaries in Canada, the United States and/or other countries. OpenOffice.org is a trademark of Team OpenOffice.org e.V.
NeoOffice is a registered trademark of Planamesa Inc. StarOffice is a registered trademark of Sun Microsystems, Inc. in the
U.S. and other countries. Mac and Mac OS are trademarks of Apple Inc., registered in the U.S. and other countries. All other
trademarks are the property of their respective owners.
Pamela Crosby is a paralegal with Kessler & Collins, A Professional Corporation in Dallas, TX.
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