Set your own default Paste options with Word 2007

By default, whenever you copy or move text from one document into a Word document, the pasted text retains its original format. Word 2003 and 2002 provided a Smart Tag that would let you change the format of the pasted text to either plain text or the matching format of the Word document. This was an improvement over having to reformat the text manually, but it still was necessary with each copy-and-paste operation. Word 2007 changes all that by allowing you to set your own default paste option.

For example, say you are writing a report in Word 2007 and need to copy a number of paragraphs from your company’s 2007 year-end report, originally published as a PDF document. Rather than having to use the Smart Tag to change the default paste option to Match Destination Formatting for each cut-and-paste instance, you can change the default so Word will reformat it automatically.

Before copying or moving text, follow these steps:

1. Click the Office button.
2. Click the Word Options button.
3. Click Advanced on the left side of the window.
4. Under the Cut, Copy, And Paste section, click the drop-down arrow of the Pasting From Other Programs box and select Match Destination Formatting.
5. Click OK.

Now, when you paste any text into your document, Word will reformat the text to match the destination document. Note that the Smart Tag will still be available in case come of the copied text needs to retain its original formatting.

Word 2007 also lets you change the default paste options differently depending on the source document. For example, while you may want to match destination formatting when copying between documents, you may want pasted text to keep its formatting when you need to move text within a document. In that case, you would not change the Keep Source Formatting (Default) option in the Pasting Within The Same Document box.

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