Quick Formatting with Notepad and Word

If you copy and paste from the web, you frequently get a bunch of garbage and some bad formatting.  The same can be true with PDFs and other such documents, and formatting each individual item is aggravating to say the least.  When I was working on a project to organize and format questionnaires for a clinical psych lab, I ran into a lot of issues when it came to copying and pasting.  I'm sure some people already know these tips and perhaps take for granted that not everyone knows how to do this, so this is for people who struggle with formatting and want an easier solution than painstakingly editing each line.

This Instructable shows to quickly format copied text for reuse on the web, for an email, or for a document using Notepad and Word (2003).  Here is the source used in this example.

If you want to more clearly see the process, click on the "i" on each image and view the original size.

Step 1 Copy and Paste into Notepad

Copy and paste the text into Notepad.

Further Explanation:

• Open Notepad and the application/document containing the text you would like to format.
• Highlight the text and hit the CTRL button and the C button at the same time.
• Open the Notepad window and click on the white space.
• Hit the CTRL button and the V button at the same time.

Comments

[thorpozon]

hello,
i'm quite new here. can his format technique work for the mac format. can it also be applied to ipad format where it could be enlarged by fingers?

[Goodhart]

Nice....the only problem I have is that I can't afford WORD. SO I must use OpenOffice (I think it has changed hands again, so it may be called something else....). I will see if the instructions translate well, later.

[AngryRedhead]

Unfortunately I don't think it does - just checked. I'm using Word 2003, which you can find on eBay for $20-30 if it helps at all.

[Goodhart]

Not really, it isn't very secure. I will look at what you were trying to do, when I get a chance, and then maybe I can post the same instructions for those few of us that can't afford Word :-)

[hiflyer]

used to do this A LOT as well back in the day...

assuming taken from http://snapjudge.posterous.com/paraprosdokian

in looking at the HTML source, there was simply a

between each line item

copying the source and pasting into work as raw text & then searching and replacing each

with a new line = one step ;)

hopefully sounds helpful :)

[hiflyer]

sorry, just realized you linked source to a different page, but in numbered HTML lists it's same same :)

[AngryRedhead]

Going to the source code and editing from there is definitely an option, but if you know to look at the source code, then you probably know how to do this. I'm trying to keep it simple for people who aren't as comfy with source but who might want/need to blog, send out newsletters, or something along that line of skill/knowledge/interest. ;-)

[hiflyer]

all good :D

my < /li > < li > got stripped out in original post