Your copy & paste tips

[August_Bouvier]

It took me an hour to c/p 13 pages of Word text. I went to bed with a raging headache. I'm wondering if there's a better way.

When I submit a story via the c/p method, the original paragraph spacing is lost. So I have to keep switching between MS Word and the subimission page to make sure I've entered the gaps between paragraphs correctly. Gotta love the eyestrain.

This is fine when a page has a lot of dialogue--because the quoatation marks guide you. But when it's paragraphs of text....

 

[jomar]

Hi. Huh. Not sure what's going on. I use ctrl-A then ctrl-C then paste it into the submission page. I haven't had trouble with the spacing and don't do anything special (coding).

 

[sr71plt]

Hmmm. Nothing like this happens to me with copy/paste submission from Word. You single space the original, no indents, extra line feed between paragraphs, right?

 

[Zeb_Carter]

I don't understand I use Word and just select all copy then paste into the form no problems, no paragraph loses.

If you have a text editor...say like TextPad (which you can download for free) I would cut and past into there first. Make sure all the paragraphs are correct then cut and past from there into the lit form.

 

[rgraham666]

I format my stories separately, in a fresh document. Put carriage returns to space out paragraphs. Add formatting tags.

Then I select all from it, copy, then paste to the submissions window.

Haven't had any problems yet.

 

[August_Bouvier]

Perplexed

After reading your posts--which came as a surprise because I didn't think my c/p issue was unique--I did some playing around.

I c/p'd an upcoming story, which was created on a 2007 laptop, following Jomar's method (ctrl+a, ctrl+c, ctrl+v). It appeared with all paragraphs.

I tried this with the story that's I submitted yesterday and it appeared again with no paragraphs*. I checked the "paragraph" section under "format" and noticed there was a 10pt spacing in the "after" tab and "multiple" in the line spacing tab. All other items matched the paragraph format for the story that pasted correctly. I fixed it, but I have to select the entire document prior to resetting the format. I lose paragraphs in Word.

So I corrected the format, c/p'd again, and it appeared 90% without paragraphs. The last page of MS text seemed to paste ok I saved a copy as MS document--the original is a 2007 Marco enabled document--to see if that would help. No dice. When I corrected the format with the entire document selected, it removed all paragraphs. This didn't occur when I deslected.

I don't get it. I didn't change any of the default settings when I created these two files. I just opened Word and went about typing.

*the sumbitted story was created on a
different computer.

 

[starrkers]

I used to have a similar problem. Had extra spacing formatted into the paragraph setting of Word.

I've since changed it to standard spacing and add a line between each par as I type (much as when I'm posting here).

That works a treat.

 

[Darkniciad]

I format my stories separately, in a fresh document. Put carriage returns to space out paragraphs. Add formatting tags.

Then I select all from it, copy, then paste to the submissions window.

Haven't had any problems yet.

Ditto

 

[TE999]

I send my stories in as attachments to e-mails.

It's slower posting--but I don't get headaches either.

 

[August_Bouvier]

I format my stories separately, in a fresh document. Put carriage returns to space out paragraphs. Add formatting tags.

Since I'm obviously tech impaired, can someone tell me how this is done step by step?

I copy and pasted a chapter into a new word document and the problematic paragraph format got imported. When I corrected it, I lost the paragraphs.

 

[Darkniciad]

Since I'm obviously tech impaired, can someone tell me how this is done step by step?

I copy and pasted a chapter into a new word document and the problematic paragraph format got imported. When I corrected it, I lost the paragraphs.

I go through in Wordperfect and search for the italic start code ( similar process in Word ) to locate all my italics without fail. Then I just surround everything italic with <i>italic text</i> and click next for the next one. Same thing for any bolds ( only use that for my LST3Ks and the occasional god thundering something ) Then I hit the center and blockquotes ( <center></center> <blockquote></blockquote> )

After that, I paste into Wordpad. I usually have to insert the occasional carriage return where Wordperfect/Word page breaks are, but otherwise everything comes out fine, and all of the extra formatting stuff of Word/Wordperfect goes bye-bye without any fuss.

I go through and replace any em dashes with the character code ( — ) via a find-replace, so that my dashes come out as dashes instead of double hyphens.

( a bug in the Lit text processor that the coders are working on. Note: There's a font-changing bug with center, blockquote, left, right, etc as well )

Once that's done, I save it as a plain .txt file, and it's ready for upload ( I don't C/P. The upload of plain text has the same posting time/ preview ability of C/P, but you could C/P it if you want )

Review in the preview, fix any carriage returns I missed, and submit.

More work, but at least I know my formatting is how I want it when it finally posts.

 

[August_Bouvier]

Light at the end of the tunnel

I added the paragraph spacings to the chapter I just imported into the New document. Luckily it was only six pages. That was the only way I knew to get the correct formatting to apply to the entire document.

I did a trial submission and it worked.

Thank you so much for your help! If I hadn't posted this question, I'd have continued on, unaware that there was a formatting error imported from the original document I created in November.

No more headaches!

 

[Weird Harold]

Since I'm obviously tech impaired, can someone tell me how this is done step by step?

I copy and pasted a chapter into a new word document and the problematic paragraph format got imported. When I corrected it, I lost the paragraphs.

Look for the symbol that is circled on the attached image -- it's the toobar button to show normally hidden characters like paragraph breaks, tabs and spaces.

If you click that button and are not showing two of the paragraph symbols at the end of each paragraph, then you will lose your paragraph breaks when you C&P into the submission form.

You will lose any paragraph indents no matter what you do because HTML doesn't support them even if you use leading spaces other than the nbsp HTML tag for a non-breaking space -- which is pain to implement and will be stripped out to match Lit's "look and feel" standardization.

 

[Weird Harold]

I added the paragraph spacings to the chapter I just imported into the New document. Luckily it was only six pages. That was the only way I knew to get the correct formatting to apply to the entire document.

I did a trial submission and it worked.

Thank you so much for your help! If I hadn't posted this question, I'd have continued on, unaware that there was a formatting error imported from the original document I created in November.

No more headaches!

To convert single paragraph breaks to double paragraph breaks in MSWord:

Find = ^p

Replace = ^p^p

You might have some inadvertant "manual line breaks" in your document as well, so:

Find = ^l (lowercase L)

Replace = ^p^p

 

[evanslily]

I know exactly what you're talking about. I got so fed up I got into the habit of copying and pasting my Word document into Notepad first--and then uploading into the paste box from Notepad. Never had a paragraphing problem since. But I'm gonna have to try some of the suggestions here now.

 

[Hank_Carey]

It took me an hour to c/p 13 pages of Word text. I went to bed with a raging headache. I'm wondering if there's a better way.

When I submit a story via the c/p method, the original paragraph spacing is lost. So I have to keep switching between MS Word and the subimission page to make sure I've entered the gaps between paragraphs correctly. Gotta love the eyestrain.

This is fine when a page has a lot of dialogue--because the quoatation marks guide you. But when it's paragraphs of text....

I've found a fairly easy way to accomplish what is taking you so long to do. First, get yourself one of the free blog accounts, i. e., Blogspot, Livejournal, etc. In MS Word, try to use as much HTML as you can, tag all italics and so on.

After you're finished with your story in MS Word, copy everything into the webblog entry, and publish it there. Then, go back into the edit option and everything will come up with HTML tags (including paragraph formatting), and you can copy that and paste it into the Literotica submission browser.

You'll find that there are very few, if any, formatting errors.

 

[August_Bouvier]

Thank you for the additional tips. It's good to have backup methods, just in case.

 

[Weird Harold]

Thank you for the additional tips. It's good to have backup methods, just in case.

One more tip:

Rather than fiddle with all of the formatting one element at a time, select the entire document with CTRL-A and change the style selection in the formatting toolbar (or by going to Format/Style on the menu bar) to Plain Text -- that will remove all of the WYSIWYG formatting -- like white-space before and after paragraph breaks, paragraph indents and centering -- but not bold, italics or underline.

You'll probably still need to use the Find & Replace trick to double up your parapgraph breaks so it doesn't look like you've lost your paragraphs, but nearly everything else can be chaned in one simple operation.


It's quicker than saving to plain text and checking with notepad or wordpad for problems and doesn't kill your italics bold and underlining.

 

[August_Bouvier]

That's what I did, thinking it would work but I lost all the paragraph spacing. So I had to enter the spacing manually after correcting the format. Weird.

Thanks again!


August

 

[where]

I used to have a similar problem. Had extra spacing formatted into the paragraph setting of Word.

I've since changed it to standard spacing and add a line between each par as I type (much as when I'm posting here).

That works a treat.

completely off topic. Just wanted to drool over starrkers' av

 

[Weird Harold]

That's what I did, thinking it would work but I lost all the paragraph spacing. So I had to enter the spacing manually after correcting the format. Weird.

Thanks again!


August

You only lost the What You See Is What You Get (WYSIWYG) paragraph formatting showing you what MSWord would print on a page, Plain text mode just shows you what you really have in a document as far as paragraph spacing.

The paragraph breaks are still there and searchable with the find and replace function so you can double them up the way Lit needs them to be.

 

[Zeb_Carter]

The image attached here is what a word doc should look like with the show everything button pressed...