How to Paste in a Note as HTML Content?

[DaveS 23]

After copying the contents of an HTML email and pasting into a new note the result is an unsightly mess. I discovered that I can get back the original formatting by pressing Ctrl+Z (undo) immediately after pasting. However, if I start editing the note and then trying to undo, this does not work. 

Is there any way to make "paste as HTML content" the default?

Evernote for Windows 10.13.4-win-ddl-public (2607)

Editor: v123.0.15939

[gazumped 11,666]

35 minutes ago, DaveS said:

After copying the contents of an HTML email and pasting into a new note the result is an unsightly mess. I discovered that I can get back the original formatting by pressing Ctrl+Z (undo) immediately after pasting. However, if I start editing the note and then trying to undo, this does not work. 

Is there any way to make "paste as HTML content" the default?

Evernote for Windows 10.13.4-win-ddl-public (2607)

Editor: v123.0.15939

Hi.  It's been explained a couple (of hundred) times here that the content of a web page is formatted through hidden codes, external style sheets and one or other of a dozen or so different coding languages.  So copying a section and removing some or all of the style instructions,  naturally has - unexpected - results.  Likewise adding your own (or at least Evernote's) fonts and layout with conflicting information is likely to scramble the page.

Setting "paste as HTML" as a standard would not help these facts of Internet life.

You can however screenshot the page,  using Clipper,  your native OS features,  or any one of dozens of third party 'copy a web page' services,  and then annotate the picture with graphics and comments.  Or you can copy the content of the page using 'simplified article' (-or any one of...) and play around with the wording to your hearts content.

Somewhere in all of that (and depending on how much editing is involved) you could print the page to a PDF file and annotate or even -maybe- edit that file.

Ctrl+Z by the way just 'undoes' what you just did - hence resetting the edits back to their original condition.  If you have to use it,  you're probably doing something wrong...

 

[DaveS 23]

@gazumped thanks for the reply. However, I think you missed my point. For starters, I understand about HTML and CSS. I am a web developer. 

The issue I reported is about the way the HTML email content is initially imported. As I mentioned, I copied from a nicely formatted email in Outlook and pasted into a new note in Evernote. Immediately after importing, the contents in Evernote are an unsightly mess. If I then immediately press Ctrl+Z the content changes into a nicely formatted note like the original email.

Right now, it seems I get one chance to get things right. If I do: 1) new note; 2) paste; and 3) Undo I get exactly what I want: the gray title bar saying HTML Content, nicely formatted. But if I then start any editing the ability to undo back to the nice formatting is lost.

So, what I'm hoping for is a way to either automatically paste the nice formatting initially. Or to have a way to redo the formatting of the pasted section after editing some other portion of the note.

Regarding the other options you suggested:

• The Simplified Article format is the problem. This is what I get initially after pasting. If I then Undo I get HTML Content which is what I'm after in this scenario.
• Screen shots are less than ideal as the text cannot be searched. And the appearance may vary on different devices.
• PDFs are also less than ideal, requiring extra work to get what I can otherwise get with a simple Undo

[ehrt74 240]

Evernote has built in OCR for images, btw

[gazumped 11,666]

18 hours ago, DaveS said:

If I then immediately press Ctrl+Z the content changes into a nicely formatted note like the original email.

Hmmn.  Sorry I missed your main point,  but I still think this is a coding issue - Evernote uses their own brand of HTML within a note,  and obviously the 'straight' HTML posting is being mangled in the conversion like a phrase being translated between two languages.  It's probably a complete accident that 'undoing' something reverts the change.  Since you;re a subscriber,  best advice would be to raise this with Support,  who may be able to suggest something better - but as above,  both PDF and image files will be indexed by Evernote. (OCR on attached PDF files is premium only,  but it is possible to OCR externally to make the file searchable.)

Tips for searching scanned PDFs

How Evernote makes text inside images searchable

https://help.evernote.com/hc/requests/new