When you paste text into a Word document you may be quite used to seeing the Clipboard icon pop up where you could choose how the text should be formatted…

This was something in Word that, while very helpful, could become quite annoying should you have to repeat this step too often.

For those of you who have felt that frustration and are currently working with Word 2007 then I have some good news for you.

In Word 07 the Clipboard icon offers yet another choice:

At the very bottom you’ll find Set Default Paste…

If you choose this you’ll be taken to the Advanced tab, Copy and Paste section of your Word Options. (This can also be accessed via the Office Button.)

Here’s where you’ll find that you do have some say in how the pasted text is formatted from the beginning.

You’ll notice that the default behavior can be set for 4 different situations:

1. Pasting within the same document.
2. Pasting between documents.
3. Pasting between documents when style definitions conflict.
4. Pasting from other programs.

Set your preferences and click OK.

Setting these preferences doesn’t remove the Clipboard icon and its choices, so these changes won’t guarantee that you’ll never have to use the Clipboard icon… it certainly should help cut down on the amount of time you spend using it.

~ April