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Old 05-03-2020, 03:01 PM
BCVolkert BCVolkert is offline Copying Content Control from One Document to Another only copies text Windows 10 Copying Content Control from One Document to Another only copies text Office 2019
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Default Copying Content Control from One Document to Another only copies text

I have a document containing content controls. I want to copy a portion of this document that contains a few content controls to another document. When I do, the content controls are not copied. Instead, I get only the default text or any other text that may be in the originating content control.



I have experimented with various Word/File/Options/Advanced/Cut, copy, and paste. Nothing seems to work. Currently the first four options are all at their (Defalut) settings. Deselecting "Use smart cut and paste" does not seem to have an effect either.

These documents were originally Word 2003 .doc documents that were opened and saved as Word .docm versions using Office 365. The problem exists in the .docm versions. I did not try it in the old .doc versions. Both documents use styles consistently and are kept in agreement using the Import/Export feature in the Manage Styles dialog.

Thanks for any help you may be able to offer.
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Old 05-03-2020, 03:04 PM
Charles Kenyon Charles Kenyon is offline Copying Content Control from One Document to Another only copies text Windows 10 Copying Content Control from One Document to Another only copies text Office 2019
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Word 2003 documents contain no Content Controls. They cannot.
What are your paste settings for copying from one document to another. They may be text only.
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Old 05-03-2020, 03:29 PM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Charles Kenyon View Post
Word 2003 documents contain no Content Controls. They cannot.
More correctly, .doc files cannot contain content controls.

Additionally, although Microsoft at one time offered a converter that allowed Word 2003 to read files in the .docx and .docm formats, any content controls in such documents were rendered as their results in Word 2003 & earlier (much the same as if you'd unlinked a field). Moreover, IIRC, saving those files with Word 2003 & earlier permanently converted the content controls to their results, so that they would also no longer be accessible in Word 2007 & later.
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Old 05-03-2020, 07:33 PM
BCVolkert BCVolkert is offline Copying Content Control from One Document to Another only copies text Windows 10 Copying Content Control from One Document to Another only copies text Office 2019
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Charles and Paul,

Thanks for responding so quickly. I've learned a lot from each of you over the years. I really appreciate the contributions you have been making to the Word community.

These documents were created in Word 2003 a long time ago. Neither of them had Content Controls at the start of this effort. I'm modernizing copies of these files using Word in Office 365 (presumably Word 2019).

Before trying to add the Content Controls, I saved both documents as .docm files. These files will be used like forms and the functionality of Content Controls will be helpful to users. I have a bunch of them to do; so, creating the Content Controls in one .docm file and copying the applicable Content Controls to subsequent .docm files will save me a lot of time and reduce user confusion due to inconsistencies.

Prior to my earlier post, I successfully added Content Controls to one of the files. I used Greg Maxey's Content Control Tools add-in to create the Content Controls and they seem to work as expected in the .docm file in which they were created. Specifically, changing the content in one Content Control causes changes to similarly named Content Controls in the rest of the document.

Content Controls having like purposes (e.g. Name and Date of Birth etc) will be used in many other files; so, i want to simply copy the Content Controls that I develop to the other files as warranted. I'm not worried about these controls being linked from one file to another at this time. I'm just trying to save the trouble of recreating the same Content Controls repeatedly in these other files.

Having successfully created a few Content Controls in the first .docm file using Maxey's add-in, I copied these working Content Controls from the first .docm file to the second .docm file. However, the only thing that got copied from the first .docm file into the second .docm file was the Placeholder Text from the first .docm file. It went into the target .docm file as only plain text (as though I had just typed the characters). It just got the _____________ characters I used as Placeholder Text. If i add content to the Content Control in the source document (e.g. Name Control = "Fred"), when I do the copy "Fred" shows up in the target as plain text; but, it is not a Content Control.

Key observations: When I copy the Content Controls within a .docm document, the copying works. When I copy them from one .docm file to another .docm, only the current value of the Content Control is copied. It does not seem to matter if I copy whole paragraphs or individual content controls. Various permutations of Paste Special does not produce any improvement.

My settings in Word/File/Options/Advanced/Cut, copy, and paste are:
Pasting within the same document: Keep Source Formatting (Default)
Pasting between documents: Keep Source Formatting (Default)
Pasting between documents when style definitions conflict: Keep Source Formatting (Default)
Pasting from other programs: Keep Source Formatting (Default)

I don't think the style definitions conflict because I copied them from one document into Normal.dot using the Manage Styles dialog and then from Normal.dot to each of the new .docm files.

I guess I should not have mentioned the Word 2003 origin of these files. It is likely irrelevant; but, I was trying to be complete. My concern was that some leftover goop in the file was polluting the newly saved .docm file. Sorry for the confusion my apparent OCD has created.

I look forward to round 2.

Appreciatively,

Bruce Volkert
Office 365 (running locally)
Windows 10 Pro (fully updated)
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Old 05-03-2020, 07:48 PM
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The only way I can reproduce the behaviour you describe is by pasting the copied content into a .doc format document; not when pasting into a .docx or .docm document.
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Old 05-03-2020, 10:13 PM
BCVolkert BCVolkert is offline Copying Content Control from One Document to Another only copies text Windows 10 Copying Content Control from One Document to Another only copies text Office 2019
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Paul,

Well that's a great clue!!!

After your confirmation that it should work for newly created documents, I noticed that the target .docm was in Compatibility Mode.

I started a new document, saved it as .docm and as .docx. Content Controls from the source .docm will paste into both of those as Content Controls (replicating your result). Although both of my original .docm documents were converted from .doc to .docm using the File Save procedure, the source document was not in Compatibility Mode; but, the target document was. I suspect the the Content Control Tool made the switch as being a requirement to create the Content Controls in the source document. I had not used the Content Control Tools add-in on the second .docm so it was content to remain in Compatibility mode.

It took some effort to find the options needing change to save the target .docm document without the save resulting in Compatibility Mode. When I finally figured that out, the pasting delivers the Content Control as intended. Interestingly, the Content Controls are not Mapped in the target document by default; but, I can handle that with Maxey's Content Control Tool and/or a macro that will run through all the Content Controls in a document.

For the record: The critical step in Word was File / Options / Advanced / Compatibility options for [filename], Lay out this document as if created in Microsoft Word 2013-2019.

Thanks for the help, Paul.

Thankfully,

Bruce Volkert
Currently undergoing withdrawal from Compatibility Mode
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  #7  
Old 05-04-2020, 04:43 PM
Charles Kenyon Charles Kenyon is offline Copying Content Control from One Document to Another only copies text Windows 10 Copying Content Control from One Document to Another only copies text Office 2019
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Also, note that Greg's Content Control Tools has a provision to convert a document from legacy formfields to Content Controls.
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  #8  
Old 05-05-2020, 10:48 AM
BCVolkert BCVolkert is offline Copying Content Control from One Document to Another only copies text Windows 10 Copying Content Control from One Document to Another only copies text Office 2019
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OK. Thanks for the tip.

Unfortunately, I created most of these documents with Office 2003 and they are really just dumb Word documents.

In 2003, I had not learned much about Word and the "forms" simply contain _____________ characters to be filled in with an old thing called a pencil. I think the more modern variant was called a pen or something. The old tech was hardly tech at all. I'm also told it snowed a lot and people walked around backwards to school.

Anyway, thanks for the help. It's really nice to know there are people who give so much of themselves.
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Old 05-05-2020, 12:11 PM
Charles Kenyon Charles Kenyon is offline Copying Content Control from One Document to Another only copies text Windows 10 Copying Content Control from One Document to Another only copies text Office 2019
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You are welcome.

I not only remember such forms, I still use them.
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