Hi!
I have a pretty specific question about pasting into a document whose formatting is restricted. I'm using Word 2007.
I'm working with a doc whose styles are restricted. When I paste formatted text into the doc from other documents/websites/etc, usually my document strips away formatting and doesn't import the styles (or if it does, I can't see them at least as mine are restricted to a certain style set).

This is GREAT because I keep the styles consistent throughout the doc and also my gallery doesn't become cluttered with imported styles.



HOWEVER the big question comes when I paste highlighted text into my document. Not text that has colored shading, but text that was "highlighted" with the highlighter in the other document.
When pasted, the highlighting carries over into my document. Furthermore, clearing the text's styles doesn't clear the highlighting.

One way I know I can get around this is by pasting "special" - unformatted text- but I'd like to avoid this as the document will be passed around among many people who might forget to paste this way every time they paste highlighted text.

Is there any way to clear the highlight or create a style that will override the highlighted pasted text when applied? Again, remember that my formatting palette is locked so most of my power lies in styles!!
Thanks in advance!

Unfortunately I don't think there is a way to clear it once it is in there. Because highlighted text isn't an actual style like bold or italic for example, clear formatting or applying a different style won't work.

We had the same problem with our company templates, people wanted to use highlighted text but couldn't so were pasting in highlighted text from unlocked documents!

All we could do was unlock the document when people had finished putting their content in, remove the highlight and lock it again. Very annoying!

well, there are a few ways to get rid of highlighted text without unlocking a doc, but none of them are very user-friendly, in my opinion! also all of these must be done per user- that is, i can't make any of the 3 following options a default in my locked template

1. in your Word options, you can change your "view" settings- just unselect "view highlighted text."

2. you can paste-special the highlighted text as "unformatted"

3. this is a weird one- you can use the find and replace tool to replace "highlight" with blank.

why Word has created this awful non-character, non-paragraph "characteristic" is beyond me. but i'm angry!

thanks for your response.