Copy Formatting to another document

I forgot to mention that I'm using Word 2003.

Burt Lake

Thank you for the help.  You're porbably right - I will need to do it the hard way, but at least I know what is and isn't possible.

Gary Street

 

If your users used styles, it can be done. However, from what you posted, they did not. So, you're stuck with a format painter copying of formats. A little know fact is that all paragraph formatting in Word is kept in the paragraph mark. You need to click the Show/Hide icon to see the paragraph marks, then select one, copy it, and past it over an existing one. This will format the pasted paragraph identical to the copied paragraph.

Here's a thought for future reports. Make a template with the desired formatting,i.e., paragraph formats, font style, margins and any special headings, etc. Send it to each person that will be preparing the report. Instruct them to use only this template when preparing their reports. This works very well and makes the editing process easier if required. I know because "I've been there, done that," so to speak. I also indicated on the template the formatting for each paragraph as well as instructions regarding the document setup.

I appreciate your suggestion.  But this is what I did on this project, and it only worked about 50% of the time!  Some people like to do their own thing - unfortunately it creates difficulties on my end.  Perhaps I could have done a better job of stressing the importance of using the predefined template.

 

 

Initially I had the same problem with a few people. These were very large projects that required a considerable amount of technical editing on my part. You know the saying, "Work smart, not hard." Well, they had to prepare the documents again per the instructions noted on the template. Never had the problem again. ;)

You got some excellent advice. Whatever you do will be a little tedious. Based on my experience with Word 2000 and 2002 you may find it simpler to use Cut-and-paste, well, actually "paste special". I think the key to bringing order to the chaos you face is styles. You have some choices.

1. Styles First. Set up your document with all the styles you want. Obviously this includes formatting for the individual paragraphs, headings and the like. You can set up your document with some dummy text. This might help if you have a lot of different styles,, like headings, etc. Then you copy blocks of text with a single style from your colleagues' documents. Use Edit, Paste Special to paste the text into your document. Using Paste Special the pasted text will be controlled by your styles. (If you use Paste your styles will probably be replaced by whatever styles your colleagues used.) Keep doing this until you have "imported" all the text you want.

2. Copy First. You copy all the text from your colleagues' documents into yours. You will probably have a minor formatting train wreck, but keep going. Then you go through your document, create the styles you want and apply the correct style to all applicable parts of the text. You bring order to the chaos.