Copying with text formatting only

[tindog]

I have a manuscript ready for print, but I'm creating a eBook version... how can I copy the entire thing, retaining the text formatting, like italics and such, but losing the page layout formatting like margins. I get some options in the paste function but they don't seem to cover what I'm trying to do... am I missing something? Any ideas?

[Guessed]

Page layout formatting is associated with section breaks. You can delete any section breaks to reduce the page layouts to only one but you will always have a page layout in any Word document since there is always at least one section.

The real question you needed to ask is how do you save Word in an eBook format
http://lmgtfy.com/?q=Saving+Word+as+eBook

[macropod]

Calibre (http://calibre-ebook.com/) is reported to do a good job of converting docx files to a variety of e-book fomats.

[tindog]

I don't want to sound ungrateful for the responses, I appreciate it, but apparently no one has an answer to my actual question, which is, "how can I copy the entire thing, retaining the text formatting, like italics and such, but losing the page layout formatting like margins"... I know how to format for eBook myself, I just want to be able to lift my text from the original manuscript, retaining font attributes, but not the layout template. I want italics and superscripts and the like, but not headers and pagination and margins. Hard to imagine it's not possible, but I suppose that could be the case.

[Guessed]

You can copy the entire text to the clipboard and paste it anywhere without any page layout information as long as what you copy does not contain a section break.

Where you paste it is all important though because if you paste it into another Word document then it is going to have a 'page setup' already - you can't have a 'document' without one.

[macropod]

Provided you don't copy a Section break or the last paragraph mark in the document, you can copy the lot, without headers, footers, margins, etc. As Andrew notes, though, wherever else you paste it is liable to already have its own page setup...

[tindog]

So..... no.

[Stefan Blom]

As Andrew and Paul have said, to omit Word's section formatting, you have to delete any section breaks in the Word document and then copy all content, minus the final paragraph mark (¶) of the document.

Copying Word document content without section formatting means that section formatting/page setup will be determined by the paste location.

To show/hide paragraph marks as well as other nonprinting marks, click the ¶ button on the Home tab.

[macropod]

So, yes!!! There Is a fundamental difference between copying page layouts and copying content on the one hand, and pasting page layouts and content on the other. Where do you propose to paste the text to, if not into another document?

I do take it, of course, that you're also aware you can play around with your existing document's page layout to your heart's content, without ever copying/pasting anything, then saving the result to a new file.

If the above doesn't answer your needs, perhaps you could explain what you're trying to achieve as the ultimate result.

[Charles Kenyon]

So, yes. You can copy everything but page formatting by not copying section breaks.
Section breaks will show up in draft view, except for the last one in the document which looks like the final paragraph mark.
Sections in Ribbon Versions of Word
Show non-printing formatting marks