Article 110

In order to ensure that there is no extraneous formatting on your page, you should not cut and paste text directly into your web site from Word or Outlook, as these programs include lots of unwanted font and style data. There are three ways of keeping this from happening.

1. Use a free utility called HovText which strips unwanted formatting automatically when you cut and paste. It works pretty well, and may be found at http://hovklan.com/hovtext/.
2. Type plain text directly into the administration area of your site, or,
3. Remove the formatting using a text editor. Here's how:
   1. Open the Word or Outlook document you wish to take text from.
   2. Copy the text. Select everything with CTRL-A or select specific text, then copy with CTRL-C.
   3. Open Notepad (not WordPad). This program is generally found in the Accessories menu. Paste the text into Notepad with CTRL-V. The formatting will be removed. If there are any extraneous lines between paragraphs, delete them now.
      Note: There are also many free programs that replace or enhance Notepad. We like the free Metapad, which may be downloaded from http://liquidninja.com/metapad/
   4. Copy the cleaned-up text from Notepad (CTRL-A, CTRL-C).
   5. Go to the administration section of the site. Select the page you wish to edit. Delete all current text in the edit window.
   6. Paste (CTRL-V) the text you copied into the edit window. If you wish to highlight a word or phrase, do so using bold or text foreground color (icons in second row.) Do not change font name or style! Save your changes using the Save icon (top row, second from left.)

If you still see extraneous formatting information, go to the edit window and click the button at right side of the second row of icons marked "HTML". This will allow you to see and edit the actual HTML codes. You'll probably see a bunch of extraneous codes.

Delete everything in this window, click Update to get back to normal editing, then paste again.

For more information on using the CHCS content management system, version 2.0, see Knowledge Base Article 196. For information about version 1.0, see Knowledge Base Article 138.