Changing format/style in a document

[Pilgrim]

I'm not really sure if this is a question re: 'styles' or 'format' (perhaps neither), but I'm confident the explanation below will clarify that.

There are times when I copy/paste text from either a .pdf document or from a web page into Word (2007) - I prefer my saved documents to have full justified text - and this option doesn't work, i.e., the text remains as left justified. Is there a way to remove the 'style' or 'format' of the pasted document so that I can change the justification of the text and other things, e.g., line spacing, etc., without losing other included formatting, such as bold, italic, etc.?

THANKS.

[HansV]

Make sure that the Show/Hide button in the Paragraph section of the Home tab of the ribbon is "on" (see screenshot below).

x237.png

Does the text in your document look like the first part or like the second part of the text? The second part has a paragraph break at the end of each line, and this prevents the text from being fully justified.

[Pilgrim]

Does the text in your document look like the first part or like the second part of the text? The second part has a paragraph break at the end of each line, and this prevents the text from being fully justified.

It looks like the second part with the paragraph breaks at the end of each sentence. Okay... so now that has been established, the question is...

Is there an easy way to get rid of all the irrelevant paragraph breaks?

[HansV]

Yes it requires a command that Microsoft in its stupidity hasn't made available on the ribbon in Word 2007, so we have to start by customizing the Quick Access toolbar.

- Click the little dropdown arrow to the right of the Quick Access Toolbar.
- Select 'More Commands...' from the dropdown menu.
- Select 'Commands Not in the Ribbon' from the 'Choose commands from' dropdown.
- Select 'AutoFormat Now' in the list of commands.
- Click Add >>.
- Click OK.

x239.png

Now that that is out of the way, select the text that you want to "fix".
Then click the 'AutoFormat Now' button on the Quick Access Toolbar.
Hopefully this will remove the superfluous paragraph marks, allowing the text to be fully justified.

[Pilgrim]

Well, thanks for the destructions. It did allow full justification of the text and only required minor manual adjustments in some other parts. For me, it worked just dandy.