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Copy-pasting from a Web page no longer retains formatting


Max Barclay

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I'm currently using v5.8.3.6507 on W7 (64).

 

I don't often copy-paste between Web pages and Evernote, but when I've done so in the past, the content from those pages generally keep their formatting (e.g. type, colours, tables etc). When I've tried to do that today the formatting is lost and the content formatting merges with the default note formatting.

 

If I use the Web Clipper, the selection can be clipped and the formatting retained in a note. However, this is not the ideal solution for me as I want to be able to copy-paste from multiple sections and pages into a note.

 

How can I retain the formatting of the content being copy-pasted?

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Hi.  If you're pasting into an existing note,  then the incoming text will be affected by the formatting style which is already present in that note.  So pasting from multiple sources into one note is always going to be a canine's breakfast.  Best option may be to clip your selections into separate notes with enough of a title to allow you to see the order in which they should be joined together,  then merge those notes.  The merged note will have the individual styles of each section,  but it will be separated by a large grey header.  You can edit that down.  If there are a number of notes,  merging them will be a challenge - merge a couple at a time until you get the hang of it - if you want to get the original notes back after a merge,  they'll be in the Trash notebook.

 

Another option is to 'Simplify Formatting' or 'Remove Formatting' in the original clip,  but that doesn't preserve the style,  which was your main requirement

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I'm currently using v5.8.3.6507 on W7 (64).

 

I don't often copy-paste between Web pages and Evernote, but when I've done so in the past, the content from those pages generally keep their formatting (e.g. type, colours, tables etc). When I've tried to do that today the formatting is lost and the content formatting merges with the default note formatting.

 

 

How can I retain the formatting of the content being copy-pasted?

 

This might, or might not, apply to EN Win, but starting with EN Mac, Evernote is rewriting their Note Content editor.  EN Mac is now on Ver 6.0.6, and most of the rewrite seems complete.

 

In EN Mac 6.0.6, when I paste text from other sources (like a web page) the format of the web is generally kept, but there are some exceptions.  I believe this may be due to the HTML coding of the web page.  If the section of the web page I copy  does NOT have any explicit HTML formatting, Evernote will assume the default format when pasted into Evernote because it has no other information.

 

Evernote editor formatting has long been an issue all all platforms yielding lots of inconsistencies and  unexpected behavior.

Hopefully the EN editor rewrite will fix most of these.

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Thanks for replying, Gazumped. If I've understood correctly, Evernote has taken a retrograde step to copy-pasting content, then: what I used to be able to do - very handily - can no longer be done  :blink:

 

Even if I start with a blank note - no formatting applied - the original formatting is stripped out.

 

On that basis, it sounds like I need to take a closer look at OneNote for notes made from Web content :/

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Remembering that Evernote's internal format isn't as expressive as full-on HTML, any copy/paste from a web source may result in inconsistencies (and remember that web designers don't always generate HTML that plays well in all contexts). I'm pretty sure that Evernote's web clipper processes web content differently than the native Windows client does when pasting from an external source (one obvious difference is that the native client has a default font, whereas the web clipper doesn't, which may come into play; but I do this sort of thing fairly regularly, and I'm not seeing any difference between the current version and older versions.

 

Just for fun, though, I tried clipping this page both ways. Clipping using the web clipper was definitely more faithful to the original. Both retained the typeface of the article's normal text. The sidebar on the right was handled correctly by the web clipper, such that resizing the width of the note was reflected in the article's text area; in the Windows client, the sidebar overlaps the text area if the note window is not wide enough for both; that seemed to be the biggest difference I saw.I didn't dig any deeper, like looking at what was on the clipboard vs. what came across in the ENML. That costs extra... 

 

So there are differences, but the hand-clipped version definitely retained a fair bit of the original formatting, which might suffice for some folks (it's usually OK for me, though I also like the web clipper a lot).

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