Bushwalk Australia

Say I'm preparing for a walk. (Usually that's a safe bet.) I want to copy and paste some track notes from someone's trip report on this or another website. I don't think copyright is a problem, as all the folks I know who blog are happy to share their notes with other walkers. That's part of why they blog.

I copy and paste a section into Word, but can't get rid of the text highlighting (green here, black - with white text - from another popular source). I don't want to use unnecessary ink when I print out my compiled notes. I'd rather not have to type everything out myself, though there is merit in helping me remember what it said. There are a few other edits I couldn't do, but this one is the main issue. Any tips? What basic bit of knowledge am I missing? Ta.

Paste it into a very simple old text editor - eg notepad, save it from there in .txt format.
Or Word ... try saving it in .txt format.

The .txt format should not have colours, links etc. Once saved - close word. And then open the .txt file - should be free of them extras you don't want.

Thanks, Warin. I tried saving it in .txt format in Word. That does get rid of it. Yay!

It's a bit clunky, though, as I actually would rather not have to redo other editing that I do want - like bold, italics etc, when I put it back into Word. I wonder if there's another way.

I haven't used Word for a while but you should be able to just highlight the odd text then format it to the same color, font etc of the main text. In fact, you could select the whole document and change the text color and font. That will make it all the same and won't change the other formatting like bold or italics at all. If you have a local library they can give you hands on help with this sort of stuff.

Also, I'm pretty sure when you paste the bits you are copying you can use the 'paste as plain text' option.

Click at the start of the document before the first word then press Ctrl and A together to select everything in the document.
Then click black as your text colour and then click bold. Everthing will change to black then anything in bold will change to normal type.

Try copying the text and when you go to paste it into the Word doc, right-click at the insertion point and select Paste Special, then Unformatted Text ... or words to that effect.

I use LibreOffice so not certain that this feature exists in Word (but most Word function is in LibreOffice).

The same idea but an alternative method would be to click at the insertion point where you want to copy, then go to Edit menu and select Paste Special etc etc

Thanks, guys. Sorry I wasn't clear. I know how to change font colour, highlight colour, or choose none. The problem is that when I copy it from a website, I'm unable to use the usual method to select no highlighting. I click 'none', but nothing happens.

bernieq wrote:Try copying the text and when you go to paste it into the Word doc, right-click at the insertion point and select Paste Special, then Unformatted Text ... or words to that effect.

Eureka! That's it! I can even paste it as Formatted text, keeping bold font etc, but losing the highlight that I don't want. Looks like it has to do with it being HTML.

PS From another website, I need to paste the text as unformatted, or I don't get anything at all. But I can bold the odd heading manually. Sure beats typing out the whole thing!

Really appreciate your collective brains and suggestions. I must remember the local library, too, Craig. (And you were right about the plain text, too.)