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Copying and Pasting Text, Removing Formatting

Copying and Pasting Text, Removing Formatting

This article provides options for copying text from a Word or other document type and pasting it into Canvas without the original formatting.

Overview

Pasting text into Canvas from other sources can cause formatting issues. Applications like Word or web pages tend to include unseen HTML coding that gets pasted into Canvas and this may cause the text to have varying fonts and font sizes, extra line spacing, and issues displaying the content.

Instructions

Paste Text and Remove Formatting

  1. Copy the text from your source document.

  2. Navigate in Canvas to the place you need the text pasted.

  3. Paste the text into the editor.

  4. Highlight the text using Ctrl+A or Cmd+A on your keyboard.

  5. Click the Clear Formatting button (looks like an italicized T with an eraser) on the toolbar.

    1. (Optional) Use the Canvas rich text editor to reformat the text as needed for readability (add bullet lists, heading, etc.).

  6. Click Save. The text will be formatted consistently.

Convert Word File to Plain Text

This option works well for Word documents without tables. For document text that you need in Canvas, we recommend you build tables directly in the Canvas rich text editor.

  1. Open the Word file containing the text you want to copy.

    1. Click File > Save As

    2. Choose a location to save the file.

    3. Select Plain Text (.txt) from the document type list below the file name.

    4. Click Save.

    5. Click OK to confirm you want plain text. If prompted, choose Yes to again confirm plain text.

    6. Close the file.

  2. Navigate to where you saved the plain text (.txt) file and open it. Notice that the formatting is gone.

  3. Copy the text.

  4. Navigate in Canvas to the place you need the text pasted.

  5. Paste the text into the editor.

    1. (Optional) Use the Canvas rich text editor to reformat the text as needed for readability (repair bullet lists, heading, etc.).

  6. Click Save. Notice that the text is formatted consistently and the entire message is displaying properly.