Copying text from Microsoft Word Reduces space randomly in the paste

JP1 · February 14, 2017, 1:19am

Steps to reproduce

Starting from scratch, what are the steps to make the bug happen? The fewer the steps, the better.

Copy a paragraph from MS Word.
Paste it into Dynalist.

Expected result

What do you expect to see after carrying out the steps above?

It should appear as it did in the document, aside from the formatting, etc.

Actual result

Instead of the expected result, what happened?

Some of the words have a space reduced between them.

Environment

Which operating system are you using? Which browser are you using? If you’re using a desktop or mobile app, what’s the version number of Dynalist?

Microsoft Word (latest), Dynalist on Chrome/Win10app, and Win10.

Erica · February 16, 2017, 1:15pm

I’ve run into this in the past.

It could be related to this: http://superuser.com/questions/461906/how-do-i-prevent-microsoft-word-from-prepending-a-space-when-pasting-from-clipb

Related MS Word knowledge base article: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/297680/options-used-for-smart-cut-and-paste-settings-in-word

In either case, at least from the looks of it, it doesn’t look like we can do anything about it. Dynalist received the extra spaces from the clipboard, and I don’t think it’s a good idea to try to ignore them since they could be intended by the user.

JP1 · February 17, 2017, 11:33pm

In this case, spaces are disappearing, but I understand that it could still be out of Dynalist’s hands.

Stephen_Dewitt · March 7, 2017, 7:03pm

But workflowy didn’t do this - I used to copy and paste from Word all the time and this never happened

TJ_Goan · March 11, 2017, 3:28pm

I have a lot of text to import from Word and I run into this problem over and over…white space is eliminated and so two adjacent words are concatenated.

I did just realize that this is NOT a problem when copying into a dynalist note. I’m just wondering if it might be possible to address the problem in lists with whatever method is used in notes.

cheers

ruud · March 12, 2017, 3:48am

Out of curiosity, when in Chrome, does the same happen when you CTRL SHIFT V ?

Erica · March 12, 2017, 10:07am

Woah I never knew about Ctrl+Shift+V. How is it different from the normal Ctrl+V?

ruud · March 12, 2017, 11:35pm

CTRL SHIFT V pastes with all formatting removed; plain text.

Very handy at times. For example, when you’re writing an email and you don’t want it to become a mess of different fonts, font sizes, colors, etc.

TJ_Goan · March 14, 2017, 2:14pm

Nice! This works for me. I just need to retrain my fingers

thanks!

JP1 · April 2, 2017, 7:01am

Btw, does this help any? Screenshot_Clipboard Test_The Oilman and His Sons.pdf

Erica · April 3, 2017, 3:19am

It would be more helpful if you can point out where the space appears.

Also the PDF only shows the first portion of the text, which is unfortunate.

JP1 · April 3, 2017, 3:56am

Yeah, it’s too bad that the site has a limit. Here’s how it ends up being pasted on Dynalist:

But in a few years they all fell into poverty and had notenough to eat nor clothes to wear, and the father and mother were no betteroff. Then the old man called all his sons and their wives and said, “You seewhat trouble you have fallen into? I have a riddle for you, explain it to me.There are four wells, three empty and one full of water. If you draw water fromthe full one and pour it into the three empty ones they will become full. Butwhen they are full and the first one is empty, if you pour water from the threefull ones into the empty one it will not be filled. What does this mean?”