default type and setting for pasting

Tom,
See my post about the toolbar Paste drop down arrow.
Roxy

Roxy Robinson <rocmar62@ranchwireless.com> writes:

Tom,
I could be wrong here - am just going by what I seem to remember. It seems that the
options available depend upon what is selected. I say that because I think I

remember

that the same options are not always there.

Yes, I think you´re right. It´s another thing making pasting very
difficult. When I still tried, I think I was confused all the time
because the option for "unformatted text" kept changing its position in
the pop-up window so that many times, I clicked on an option I didn´t
want and hit enter and then had to undo and start over.

In other words, if there is absolutely no html within the selection,
that option may not be in the popup window.

Then two options may be needed:

1.) default pasting type

2.) warn or ask or silently fall back to another option in case there´s
    nothing to paste which is of the default type

Hi,

"Manfred J. Krause" <courrier.oou.fr.mjk@googlemail.com> writes:

> Hi,
>
>> Oh, yes, I see. That calls the Paste Special command, which opens the selection
>> window; then U selects unformatted text from the window, and Enter does it. Now if
>> Lee knows how to write that Macro, it should be good to go. Excellent!!!

The macro recorder is grayed out, is that normal?

> Addendum (macro):
> [OOo community forum –
> User community support forum for OpenOffice.org, LibreOffice,
> StarOffice, and NeoOffice]
> Re: [Solved] How to paste unformatted by default?
> http://user.services.openoffice.org/en/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=16978&p=113679#p113679

Perhaps I can figure out tomorrow how to make use of it, thanks :slight_smile: How
would I bind it to the mouse button I use for pasting?

And once that works, how would I make it so that the pasted text is
inserted at the cursor position and not where the mouse pointer happens
to be?

To enable the macro recording you need to open TOOLS >> OPTIONS and in
the Options select LibreOffice then General. Tick the box "Enable
experimental (unstable) features" and macro recording will be enabled.

I am not sure why this is done unless it is a security feature.

Roxy

I need new glasses or eyeballs, I never noticed the arrow, thanks for
the tip!

Also, if you are fairly certain there is not any "extra" formatting in the
information you are copying, then just use paste. I think the Paste Special item came
about because so many people started pasting stuff from web pages into documents
(which is really nice) and didn't like what they were getting in their documents.
Course, lots of folks, including myself, didn't understand just exactly what the
command was for when it became available in M$ Office.
Roxy

Tom,
See my post about the toolbar Paste drop down arrow.
Roxy

Roxy Robinson <rocmar62@ranchwireless.com> writes:

Tom,
I could be wrong here - am just going by what I seem to remember. It seems that the
options available depend upon what is selected. I say that because I think I

remember

that the same options are not always there.

Yes, I think you´re right. It´s another thing making pasting very
difficult. When I still tried, I think I was confused all the time
because the option for "unformatted text" kept changing its position in
the pop-up window so that many times, I clicked on an option I didn´t
want and hit enter and then had to undo and start over.

In other words, if there is absolutely no html within the selection,
that option may not be in the popup window.

Then two options may be needed:

1.) default pasting type

2.) warn or ask or silently fall back to another option in case there´s
    nothing to paste which is of the default type

And just why would Macros be considered experimental features??? Macros have been
around forever.
Roxy

To enable the macro recording you need to open TOOLS >> OPTIONS and in
the Options select LibreOffice then General. Tick the box "Enable
experimental (unstable) features" and macro recording will be enabled.

I am not sure why this is done unless it is a security feature.

Dear Roxy

How Strange. It must be a windows 7 thing (I hesitate to say bug)

I have just booted up my Home computer, which runs 3.4.0 (windows XP sp3)

I click on paste special and up comes the window with the tick boxes.

Both [3.3.3 & 3.4] has 4 sections in the window :- Selection, Options, Operations and Shift cells. Selection & Options have tick boxes, Operations & shift cells are radio buttons.

I have just tried your toolbar method pasting as unformatted text - excellent - that's the better way to go

I tested (just like me) both methods only work on a untouched cells, if the cells have been formatted previously (bold, font size etc), neither work on my system.

regards

John

You are welcome. I found it by accident. Was in a hurry doing some pasting one day
and accidentally hit the arrow. Viola!
Roxy

Roxy

I need new glasses or eyeballs, I never noticed the arrow, thanks for
the tip!

Lee

I am so sorry - I know

Please read my later posting on this - and then ignore it anyway as Roxy has come up with a better idea.

regards

John B

My two cents:

The idea I have of paste special is that some programs (at least in
Windows) put the copied content in the clipboard in more than one format
(so a WMF image gets in the clipboard as WMF and as a bitmap), and with
paste special you can now pick which version to paste.

And I guess then LibO and M$O added a couple conversions of their own to
that Paste Special option.

But I might be wrong.

Roxy,

I thought the labeling strange the first time I heard of it. I would
never have tried selecting the check box.

A more accurate description should be used.

I have submitted a bug report (38509) suggesting the label be changed.

Roxy Robinson <rocmar62@ranchwireless.com> writes:

I don't know what is so difficult or time consuming.

Can I post a screencast here to show what I mean?

And I certainly don't agree with typing it in versus copying and
pasting.

As I already said, I don´t like having to type either and would rather
paste. Just LO makes pasting more troublesome than typing, so type
because it´s less troublesome.

IMHO, you would have to be an extremely fast typist to accomplish what
I just finished by typing everything in. I had 10 separate, old
spreadsheets from 10 graduating classes from my high school.

As I already said, what I need to get into my document is a few short
lines like a street address and some other things from different places
on a web page. I need to do that frequently.

I don´t need to go through 10 large spreadsheets and get all their
contents into one document. That´s probably something not done
frequently, it probably involves copying a lot of data and it doesn´t
involve web pages and perhaps not any other application than LO
itself.

In this case, you have a completely different application of copy and
paste than I do. Nonetheless I think it would be useful if you could set
a default for how to paste instead of having to chose every time when
pasting.

If you use the standard Toolbar there is an icon for cut, copy, &
paste. Beside the Paste icon is a down arrow. Click the down arrow and
select "unformatted text", and it pastes unformatted text.

Thanks, that´s another option. It´s not convenient, though, because
first you need to figure out which icon to use, then you need to hit the
very tiny down-arrow, then you need to click on the pretty small
"unformatted text" entry.

You might not understand it, but to me, the design is ergonomically
horrible. I´m not good at remembering icons and don´t care about them,
having to hit such a tiny spot with the mouse pointer is straining,
working as "visually oriented" as some people seem to do easily is
exhausting for me. I don´t use these toolbars. It´s much easier just to
move the mouse pointer over a window and to press the paste-button. LO
doesn´t need to make things so difficult.

You could use the Macro by assigning it to something like Ctrl+U, as
suggested elsewhere, but since I would already be using my mouse to
select the text, I think clicking the Paste Icon Down Arrow on the
toolbar would be just as easy and just as fast as letting go of the
mouse and hitting Ctrl+U. Hmmmmmmm.

See, that´s one of the things I´m saying: I don´t want to have to switch
between mouse and keyboard to paste a few lines into my document.

Hm. Perhaps I can find a way to put an icon into the toolbar that pastes
unformatted text? ... YES! I just did :slight_smile: It´s not an icon, it makes a
big field in the toolbar, labled "Unformatierten Text einfügen" ("insert
unformatted text"). That makes a nicely big field easy enough to click
:slight_smile: I´ll use that now.

Still users should be able to set a default pasting type.

planas <jslozier@gmail.com> writes:

To enable the macro recording you need to open TOOLS >> OPTIONS and in
the Options select LibreOffice then General. Tick the box "Enable
experimental (unstable) features" and macro recording will be enabled.

Ah, thanks, it´s no longer grayed out now :slight_smile:

John,
That is strange - very strange. I don't have hardly any of that on my window. On the
left side of the "box" I have:
Source: Unknown

Selection and under Selection in the window, the 3 options I have on the "text" I
have copied. There are no numbered tick boxes - I have to highlight/select whichever
option I want.
Over on the right hand side of the box I have 3 buttons:
OK, Cancel, and Help.
And that's it - that's all that is there.
My version shows to be 3.3.3
LibreOffice 3.3.3
OOO330m19 (Build:301)
tag libreoffice-3.3.3.1
I did have an install problem, that actually started with 3.3.2, as posted earlier.
But it did eventually get to the Installation Finished dialog box.
I wonder if all this other stuff you have on yours is part of the "experimental"
portion of the install, as I did not install that. Did you? I would be interested to
know if anyone else running Win7 has this issue???
Kind of hard to think this would have something to do with Win7. If I were still
using Vista, I might think it had something to do with, but Win7 is so much better -
Vista doesn't hold a candle to it.
Still very, very strange.
Roxy

Dear Roxy

How Strange. It must be a windows 7 thing (I hesitate to say bug)

I have just booted up my Home computer, which runs 3.4.0 (windows XP sp3)

I click on paste special and up comes the window with the tick boxes.

Both [3.3.3 & 3.4] has 4 sections in the window :- Selection, Options,
Operations and Shift cells. Selection & Options have tick boxes,
Operations & shift cells are radio buttons.

I have just tried your toolbar method pasting as unformatted text -
excellent - that's the better way to go

I tested (just like me) both methods only work on a untouched cells, if
the cells have been formatted previously (bold, font size etc), neither
work on my system.

regards

John

If you have never used all of the options that pop up from say, a copy of half a web
page, then you should try it sometime and you'll probably have a little better
understanding of what is going on with each option. I'm not sure about what is pasted
to the clipboard, but just open a new Writer document. Then copy it, go to Paste
Special and use each one of the options in the window. There will be at least 3 I can
think of: HTML format, HTML format without comments, and unformatted text. Pretty
cool.
Roxy

[...] I think the Paste Special item came
about because so many people started pasting stuff from web pages into documents
(which is really nice) and didn't like what they were getting in their documents.
Course, lots of folks, including myself, didn't understand just exactly what the
command was for when it became available in M$ Office.

My two cents:

The idea I have of paste special is that some programs (at least in
Windows) put the copied content in the clipboard in more than one format
(so a WMF image gets in the clipboard as WMF and as a bitmap), and with
paste special you can now pick which version to paste.

And I guess then LibO and M$O added a couple conversions of their own to
that Paste Special option.

But I might be wrong.

As I have already stated several times, you practically already have what you are
asking for by using the down arrow next to the Paste Icon on the toolbar! 2 clicks
instead of one. I'm sure the programmers are going to want to program that 1 click
out.
Roxy

Roxy Robinson <rocmar62@ranchwireless.com> writes:

I don't know what is so difficult or time consuming.

Can I post a screencast here to show what I mean?

And I certainly don't agree with typing it in versus copying and
pasting.

As I already said, I don´t like having to type either and would rather
paste. Just LO makes pasting more troublesome than typing, so type
because it´s less troublesome.

IMHO, you would have to be an extremely fast typist to accomplish what
I just finished by typing everything in. I had 10 separate, old
spreadsheets from 10 graduating classes from my high school.

As I already said, what I need to get into my document is a few short
lines like a street address and some other things from different places
on a web page. I need to do that frequently.

I don´t need to go through 10 large spreadsheets and get all their
contents into one document. That´s probably something not done
frequently, it probably involves copying a lot of data and it doesn´t
involve web pages and perhaps not any other application than LO
itself.

In this case, you have a completely different application of copy and
paste than I do. Nonetheless I think it would be useful if you could set
a default for how to paste instead of having to chose every time when
pasting.

If you use the standard Toolbar there is an icon for cut, copy, &
paste. Beside the Paste icon is a down arrow. Click the down arrow and
select "unformatted text", and it pastes unformatted text.

Thanks, that´s another option. It´s not convenient, though, because
first you need to figure out which icon to use, then you need to hit the
very tiny down-arrow, then you need to click on the pretty small
"unformatted text" entry.

You might not understand it, but to me, the design is ergonomically
horrible. I´m not good at remembering icons and don´t care about them,
having to hit such a tiny spot with the mouse pointer is straining,
working as "visually oriented" as some people seem to do easily is
exhausting for me. I don´t use these toolbars. It´s much easier just to
move the mouse pointer over a window and to press the paste-button. LO
doesn´t need to make things so difficult.

You could use the Macro by assigning it to something like Ctrl+U, as
suggested elsewhere, but since I would already be using my mouse to
select the text, I think clicking the Paste Icon Down Arrow on the
toolbar would be just as easy and just as fast as letting go of the
mouse and hitting Ctrl+U. Hmmmmmmm.

See, that´s one of the things I´m saying: I don´t want to have to switch
between mouse and keyboard to paste a few lines into my document.

Hm. Perhaps I can find a way to put an icon into the toolbar that pastes
unformatted text? ... YES! I just did :slight_smile: It´s not an icon, it makes a
big field in the toolbar, labled "Unformatierten Text einfügen" ("insert
unformatted text"). That makes a nicely big field easy enough to click
:slight_smile: I´ll use that now.

Still users should be able to set a default pasting type.

Roxy Robinson wrote:

And just why would Macros be considered experimental features??? Macros have been
around forever.

Macros are not considered an experimental feature. They work even if
"Enable experimental (unstable) features" is unticked. However,
*recording* macros is not a fully polished feature, so it's considered
experimental. There are other ways to create macros, such as opening
the Macro editer (ALT+F11) and typing code in Basic.

Regards

Hi Roxy and John,
I believe you two are using different parts of LibO. It sounds like
John is using Calc, while Roxy is using Writer. The paste special
options in these two modules are different.

Roxy,
your "drop-down arrow paste special" method works well. But it does
not work well in all cases.

For instance, go to a blog or website with a lot of text. Now, to
paste a paragraph into Writer you would normally select the paragraph,
copy (Ctrl+C), select the point in Writer where you want to paste it,
click the "paste special" drop-down arrow, select "unformatted text"
and it's done. In this case it works well.

But now, copy and paste every second or third word from 3 or 4
paragraphs. Now you need to do 100 or so paste specials, then 1 or 2
extra mouse clicks make it fairly tedious. From what I read, it seems
that lee is copying and pasting a few words at a time, but it is done
quite frequently. So in lee's case, he would probably prefer
something else. And it looks like he found a solution that works for
him.

lee,
I think it should be possible to assign a short-cut key to the icon
you created. As you probably don't want a keyboard button, maybe you
can try to assign it to the middle mouse button? Just a thought, I
could be wrong.

Regards
Stephan

Stephan Zietsman wrote:

So in lee's case, he would probably prefer
something else.  And it looks like he found a solution that works for
him.

Sorry, lee. I assumed your gender (by saying "he" and "him"), which
is generally considered bad etiquette. I apologise.

lee wrote:

Hm. Perhaps I can find a way to put an icon into the toolbar that pastes
unformatted text? ... YES! I just did :slight_smile: It´s not an icon, it makes a
big field in the toolbar, labled "Unformatierten Text einfügen" ("insert
unformatted text"). That makes a nicely big field easy enough to click
:slight_smile: I´ll use that now.

How did you create an icon like that? At first I thought it should be
fairly easy, but when I tried, I couldn't find a way.

Regards
Stephan

Stephan Zietsman wrote:

How did you create an icon like that?  At first I thought it should be
fairly easy, but when I tried, I couldn't find a way.

Never mind, I found it. Right-click on any toolbar -> Customise
toolbar... -> Toolbar tab -> Add... -> (Category) Edit -> (Commands)
Paste Unformatted text -> Add -> OK

I can't find a way to assign middle mouse to it though, sorry.

Regards
Stephan

Roxy Robinson <rocmar62@ranchwireless.com> writes:

As I have already stated several times, you practically already have what you are
asking for by using the down arrow next to the Paste Icon on the toolbar! 2 clicks
instead of one.

You still don´t understand it. I would have to hit an arrow so tiny
that, as you may have noticed, people --- yourself included, IIRC ---
don´t even see it, which is straining and not anywhere near as fast and
simple as the system-wide standard way of pasting which involves only
two clicks and doesn´t require one to hit tiny arrows.

Your way is two clicks more, not one, btw.

Anyway, the button for pasting unformatted text in the toolbar makes it
easy now. That doesn´t change that having the application pick something
as default which is 99% of the time not what the users want and not
allowing the users to set another default is bad design. Since LO breaks
copying and pasting because there´s useful options involved with that,
it makes it neccessary to be able to to set a default so that copying
and pasting isn´t broken anymore and the additional options can still be
used. That´s obvious and not hard to understand at all.