Bullets Break When I Copy/Paste into Notepad, Skype or plain text

[WestHillsWeb 0]

Why is it that a bulleted list breaks when copying into a plain text document, or into some other program that only deals with plain text (like Skype or Whatsapp)? I use Evernote to take notes and those other programs to communicate with my team, but the formatting breaks and it takes a lot of manual work to fix it. 

Here's what I mean:

If I have text that looks like this in evernote:

• Item One
• Item Two
• Item Three
• And so on. 

 

and then I paste it into Notepad (or Skype or Whatsapp), it pastes in like this: 

 

 

    * 
Item One
    * 
Item Two
    * 
Item Three
    * 
And so on. 

The bullet turns into an asterisk, which is fine. It's also properly indented. But then the text that should be on the same line ends up at the left margin of the following line. It takes a LOT of manual work to fix this, especially if there are multiple levels of indentation on a long list.

 

Why does it do this? Will Evernote ever fix this? Or am I doing something wrong? It's been like this for years, but it is ever so frustrating!

 

I look forward to a solution.

 

Thank you. 

-Mark

 

[Dave-in-Decatur 3,950]

I just tested and found the same result. It seems to be something to do with how Evernote's version of HTML is copied as text to the Windows clipboard. I know that's no help, but that's how it looks to me.

[jefito 5,589]

1 hour ago, WestHillsWeb said:

Why is it that a bulleted list breaks when copying into a plain text document, or into some other program that only deals with plain text (like Skype or Whatsapp)? I use Evernote to take notes and those other programs to communicate with my team, but the formatting breaks and it takes a lot of manual work to fix it. 

This is Windows, correct?

 

I use an application that lets me see what's in the clipboard. In the CF_TEXT entry (plain text), I can see the characteristic '0x0D 0x0A' carriage return / line feed pair after the asterisk. That's likely what a text editor would be looking at.

There's also an HTML_FORMAT item, which is what a rich text editor might look at. I'd have to examine that to see whether it matches up with the CF_TEXT version, translation-wise.

[Dave-in-Decatur 3,950]

I use ClipCache, and the images below show what I see when I clip a bulleted list to the clipboard, the first showing the rich text format, with line breaks after the bullets, and the second the HTML format, looking the way it should.

[WestHillsWeb 0]

Thank you both for your research. I'm glad to know it's not just me.

Your findings seem to indicate that this is a real bug and ought to be fixed. There is no use for a CR/LF after a bullet but before its related text. How do we get Evernote to fix this? 

-Mark

 

[WeCanLearnAnything 100]

I'm seeing exactly the same problems. Evernote has struggled with copy/paste for many years, with much documentation in these very forums. I'd say that if you need to copy/paste a lot, then you should consider switching note-taking programs.

The current CEO says he'll make sure the company fixes super basic things like this, but Evernote CEOs have made similar promises in the past... and now it's 2019 and users still cannot rely on copy/paste functions in a note-taking application.

If you'd like to be more proactive about this bug, contact Evernote Support on Twitter.