Learn How to Copy and Paste in WordPress without Formatting Issues

Have you ever faced any issues while copying and pasting content from a web page or a desktop app? You often face unwanted formatting when you are copying and pasting content from a web page or a desktop app. Many desktop programs are incompatible with WordPress.The pasted content looks weird because it does not match the fonts and colors of your WordPress theme. The format of your site begins to appear as a mess sometime in the process of copying and pasting content. In this article, I’ll help you learn how to copy and paste without formatting issues in WordPress easily. 

Understanding Copying and Pasting in WordPress

We all need to copy and paste content from one place to another place in our daily life. This copy and paste process reduces our time and makes our working process faster. However, we all know how to copy and paste. I will share how to copy and paste for the newbies once again!

Copying and Pasting in WordPress

To copy text or content from a document or webpage, you need to highlight or mark it using your mouse. Then, just right-click and select ‘Copy’ from the menu. Besides, you can use the keyboard shortcut Ctrl+C (Command+C on a Mac) to copy the highlighted or marked content. 

Now it’s time to paste. To paste the text or content you copied earlier into WordPress; you can right-click and select ‘Paste’ from the menu. You can also use the keyboard shortcut Ctrl+V (Command+V on a Mac) to paste the copied text or content.

When you copy a text or content, the previous formatting of the text is reproduced with it. It can disturb you when you don’t want the previous format or style! This unwanted formatting can impact how your text displays on other devices.

Many WordPress users prefer to avoid copying and pasting altogether. Instead, they create a draft of their posts straight into their WordPress site as they can format or style. Yet, you may prefer to draft using a separate tool, such as Microsoft Word or Google Docs. It allows you to work offline and make it easier to share your work for comments and revisions before publication. It’s also essential to avoid adding unnecessary formatting because it affects your page size, which means slower site speed. 

How to Copy and Paste from Microsoft Word to WordPress (Block Editor)

Copying text or content from Microsoft Word to WordPress is relatively straightforward. WordPress has allowed us to copy rich (formatted or styled) text from Word documents straight into the editor. It is a significant benefit if you are comfortable with Microsoft Word! 

Copying your post from Word into WordPress helps you keep elements like headings, bold and italic text, links, and lists. It will not allow any styling options like colors, spacing, etc.

For example, here is a document that I’m going to copy from Microsoft Word into WordPress: 

This document is formatted with a Heading and two subheadings for subsections of the post. There is some bold and italic text, a bullet list, and a link.

We will copy all the content from the Microsoft Word document and paste it inside the WordPress block editor.

One interesting fact to note is that some formatting has not been copied. The image has disappeared, but don’t worry! WordPress has created an image block in the correct place. 

Helpful Tip: Always try to use the ‘Heading styles’ in Word to create your subheadings. I suggest you not highlight the text and manually increase the font size.

Do you want to confirm that your text has been copied over correctly? Then you need to follow the instructions later in this article on checking and fixing the formatting errors.

How to Copy and Paste from Google Docs to WordPress (Block Editor)

Nowadays, Google Docs is a top-rated word processing tool. Like Microsoft Word, it’s effortless to copy and paste from Google Docs into the WordPress block editor.

Let’s give you an example to understand how it works! Here is a piece of content in Google Docs. It’s similar to the part we used in Word above to compare the differences. 

When we copy and paste the text or content from Google Docs to WordPress,

It is formatted correctly.

Well, this time, the image also appears in WordPress. But It is not uploaded to the WordPress media library and displayed directly from your Google Drive account. In that case, you need to download and upload images manually to your WordPress media library.

Copying and Pasting Using the Classic Editor

Let me know. Are you having trouble with formatting errors after copying and pasting text into WordPress? If yes, then you are probably using the old classic editor. 

The classic editor handles Word documents nicely and shouldn’t add any unnecessary code. It doesn’t work well with the text copied from Google Docs.

Here’s how the text from Google Docs looks when pasting it into the classic editor:

The headings, link, bold, and italic text all look correct.

However, some unnecessary extra formatting has been added that isn’t visible.

How to Check and Fix Copy and Paste Formatting Errors

We’re trying to learn how to copy and paste in WordPress by this time. You may have to face some formatting issues during copy and paste. So, let’s look at how to check and fix these formatting errors now.

You may know that all the text in your WordPress posts is formatted using HTML (Hypertext Markup Language). HTML tags proceed around words that are formatted in a particular way. To understand the issues more deeply, you must have a minimum HTML knowledge and how HTML works. 

For instance, the bold text in WordPress posts looks like this in HTML code:

There is It is a bold text in this sentence.

There is “It is bold text” in this sentence. The words ‘It is bold text’ will appear in bold. 

To check deeply and fix formatting issues after copying and pasting, you need to check the HTML code of your post. 

Checking the HTML Code in the Block Editor

It’s easy to view the HTML code of any block in the block editor. First, you need to click on the block. Then, just click on the three vertical dots to the right of the block’s menu. 

You will see a dropdown menu. Now,  you just need to click the ‘Edit as HTML’ option to view the HTML codes:

The HTML code of this block will appear now. You should generally see that no unwanted formatting has been added with the block editor.

Here, the paragraph correctly begins with the opening <p> tag and ends with the closing </p> tag. The sentence in bold is also correct. It starts at the <strong> tag and finishes with the closing </strong> tag. 

If you find any issues with HTML, you need to fix those issues. To fix HTML issues, you must have HTML knowledge. To reverse back to the standard view of your block, just click the three vertical dots again. Then, move forward and select the ‘Edit visually’ option to get the usual view of your block.

Checking the HTML Code in the Classic Editor

It’s easy to view the HTML code of a post in the classic editor. You can see the HTML codes by clicking on the ‘Text’ tab at the top of the box containing the post’s text. It is the HTML code for our post which was copied from Google Docs we used earlier :

There are some span tags that are unnecessary. You don’t need to worry about them.  

Also, you can see that the bold text and italic text are formatted using the <b> tag instead of <strong> and the <i> tag instead of <em>. It is normally considered best to use the <strong> and <em> tags as these give your words semantic meaning, not just visual styling. So, don’t worry! 

Suppose we copy and paste text or contents from Microsoft Word instead of Google docs in the classic editor. You will see there are no unnecessary formatting tags, and also, the bold and italics have been correctly rendered. 

To prevent such kind of unwanted codes while copying your post from Google docs, you will need to go through the HTML code and manually correct the formatting. 

Let’s fix them manually: 

1. You need to remove all the <span style=”font-weight: 400;”> and </span> tags.

2. You need to  change all the <li style=”font-weight: 400;”> to just <li>.

3. You need to  change <b> and </b> to <strong> and </strong>.

4. You need to  change <i> and </i> to <em> and </em>.

Note: You must take care of HTML attributes correctly; otherwise, it won’t work! To speed up the process, I’ll suggest you first need copy and paste the HTML code into a text editor.

Then, simply use the Find and Replace method to change incorrect formatting. Here’s an example using notepad. We are finding all example of <span style=”font-weight: 400;”> and replacing them with <span>: 

If you’ve replaced all the incorrect formatting, simply copy and paste the text back into the Text view of the classic editor to see the results.

Copying and Pasting Plain Text

Plain text is the text without any formatting. To avoid any chance of incorrect configuration, you may prefer to copy and paste plain text.

It is also an advantageous option if you’re copying a section of text from another website. For example, you might include a quote from someone else in your content. 

Copying and Pasting Plain Text in the Block Editor

Generally, the WordPress block editor doesn’t include a button or option to paste plain text. However, it’s simple to do this yourself.

The fastest method is to paste your text with the keyboard shortcut Ctrl+Shift+V (PC) or Command+Shift+V (Mac). It will automatically paste in plain text format.

Alternatively, some browsers offer the option to paste it as plain text. If you’re comfortable with Google Chrome, simply right click and select the Paste as plain text option: 

These methods will allow you to paste plain text in a single paragraph block.

Copying and Pasting Plain Text in the Classic Editor

To paste plain text into the classic editor, first, you need to click on the Toolbar Toggle button: 

You just need to click the ‘Paste as text’ icon. It looks similar to a clipboard with the letter T on it: 

Any kind of text you want to paste will be pasted in plain text mode, the previous format will be removed. When we paste the text from our Google Doc, the headings, bold, italics, bullet points, and links have all been removed, and it shows just plain text. 

While the above beginner’s guide shows you the basics of copy and pasting, WordPress also offers much more advanced copy, paste, and cloning features. I hope this article helped you learn how to copy and paste into WordPress. You might also like our tips on How To Transfer Posts and Pages From One WordPress Website To Another. 

Please feel free to share any questions or problems with me if you have any questions or issues. Put a comment, and I’ll help you get out of this.

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