It occurs because of how the object you're copying is formatted. Re the second issue, I suspect what you're getting is the creation of some bookmarks. This happens somethimes in situations that are not well undestood, where Word assumes that whatever is being copied is going to be linked to the destination. If that's what's happening here, going to Insert|Bookmark should reveal a bookmark named OLE_LINK# where the # is a number. You can delete the bookmark and the brackets will disappear with it.

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Cheers,
Paul Edstein
[Fmr MS MVP - Word]