Copying and Pasting

[Techno]

I need to copy and paste multiple paragraphs from Word 2003 into Flare 3.1. However, I'm loosing the paragraph breaks.

I'm obviously doing something stupid - but what?

[RamonS]

You are not doing something stupid. Flare removes all formatting upon insert. I understand that to be necessary as Flare otherwise would need to guess which styling to apply. Where I agree with some form of stupidity on Flare's part to exist is with ripping out all paragraphs. A paragraph in Word should be a paragraph in Flare as well.
We all can only hope that MadCap fixes this bug in Flare 4. Until then file your complaint here: http://www.madcapsoftware.com/bugs/submit.aspx

[Techno]

Thanks for that. I've posted a bug/suggestion report as suggested.

I guess the only work round is to copy all the paragraphs to a Word file, save the files as an HTML file, then import to Flare and let Flare convert it to it's own format. Finally copy and paste between Flare files.

Talk about "long winded".

[Richard Ferrell]

Why not just save it as a word file and then import the word file?

[KevinDAmery]

Or, if you're doing a manual process anyway, it may be simpler to paste it as a big block into Flare then add your own paragraph breaks.

(This is not in any way meant to apologize for the bizarre behaviour of Flare here--just suggesting that in some cases it may be quicker to just reformat in Flare than to try to trick Flare into importing it with the formating...)

[Techno]

That had been a consideration, but I'm afraid there were more than the odd few. I'd have gone as blind as my users as there were literally hundreds.

[amberlink]

If you're going to go through the whole thing of copying/pasting and losing everything, I'd suggest that you save the file to Notepad first. That way any Word stuff is stripped from the file and then paste from notepad rather than Word.

Clean paste is not always that I found.

YRMV.

[RamonS]

As far as I recall that still strips out the paragraphs / line breaks. Not much gained here.

[KevinDAmery]

I'd do what Richard suggests, then: copy the text into a new Word document then import that document into your Flare project. Flare will make HTML out of it with paragraph breaks (the problem we're discussing here only happens when you copy, not when you import).

[Techno]

What I've ended up doing is just that, and then copying and pasting between Flare files/Topics.

Unfortunately, out here in the real world, authors will throw us their revised text of a complete Topic in Word files, which as often as not don't even have "Revisions" turned on, and expect us to just "slot them in". And naturally these always seem to be large topics, which have been extensively bookmarked, indexed and all sorts.

And please, don't ask me to educate them. I shall try not to say, "I didn't have this problem with........"

[KevinDAmery]

I am a little lucky in the sense that everyone here does use revision marking (the boss likes it, so everyone uses it). I usually end up going through and copying or typeing text in sentence by sentence rather than paragraph by paragraph (the changes usually aren't that huge--if it's going to be more than a few lines at a time, they usually get me to write a draft and then they'll check it for errors. Sometimes I think they're allergic to typing more than three sentences in a row ) This may sound like a bit of a manual process, but on the plus side I don't have to worry about what sort of gobbledygook they've inserted into the Word document formatting, so I probably end up saving a ton of clean up time.

[amberlink]

I was suggesting the notepad approach because even if you are losing the line breaks, the styles might get messed up in a word import, this way you get a completely stripped text file.

[RamonS]

Just pasting from Word into Flare will strip all the styling and the paragraphs - which is exactly the problem. No need to pull the text through Notepad first.

[kashby]

Version 4 introduces new copy and paste problems.

Although you can specify a style when pasting, Flare sometimes locks the style and does not allow you to apply another. I am moving content into Flare from Word and am unable to apply any style other than "p" to some sections. Other sections allow me to apply another style, but Flare doesn't apply the style as it is defined in my CSS.

Any ideas?

[KevinDAmery]

Sounds like you may not have selected the entire block. If you only select part of the text you are technically applying a span style rather than changing the tag. If you need to change the entire tag, make sure the Show Blocks option is on then right click on the block.

[kashby]

If I select the entire paragraph and change the style from the style toolbar, nothing happens. If I select the entire paragraph and then change it by right clicking the block, it seems to work. However, right-clicking on the block and making the change there worked only on the third or fourth attempt. Weird.

Aren't these supposed to do the same thing?

Furthermore, if I apply a list property to one of the newly updated paragraphs, the "Drop down menu of assorted list actions" does not allow me to update the number to match where it belongs in the series.

[KevinDAmery]

If I select the entire paragraph and change the style from the style toolbar, nothing happens. If I select the entire paragraph and then change it by right clicking the block, it seems to work. However, right-clicking on the block and making the change there worked only on the third or fourth attempt. Weird.

Aren't these supposed to do the same thing?

Yes, but as I mentioned you have to select the entire paragraph. That includes the start and end tags. If you miss anything, Flare reverts to applying a Span tag for local formatting, which only allows Span and General styles to be applied.

Furthermore, if I apply a list property to one of the newly updated paragraphs, the "Drop down menu of assorted list actions" does not allow me to update the number to match where it belongs in the series.

How are you switching to the list style? If you're just applying a style from the style window, it won't work properly: you need to ensure that it is in an actual ol or ul list group, which you do using the List icon above the topic.

[kashby]

I did select the entire paragraph, but the styles weren't applying correctly. I also applied the numbering properties correctly.

I finally closed and restarted Flare and the problem went away. Apparently, you just have to reboot between pastes and all is forgiven.

[LTinker68]

You shouldn't have to restart Flare.

And it may appear as if you've selected the entire paragraph, but you may have missed the opening and/or closing tags like Kevin said. You have to pay close attention to the appearance of the cursor when you make the selection, because if it's a bracket [ or ], then you're inside the tag, not outside it.

On the other hand, why try to apply a span tag to an entire paragraph? Just create a custom paragraph tag that has the same styles as the span (or change the span to a generic class) and apply the custom class to the paragraph tag. You should really only use a span tag if you're applying a style to a portion of a paragraph (or other container tag) but not all the contents of that tag.