After uploading data onto our company’s website, I am shown a table with the date, company name, file name, etc. I copy & paste this into a Word document and save it in our file. When I had 2003, all I had to do is paste. With 2010, the table goes off the edge of the page. There’s no way to grab an edge and make it fit. I have to paste, then right-click, then choose Table properties, then unclick Preferred width, then move the right cell border so that the name doesn’t wrap.
Surely, there is some way to set Word so that pasted tables fit the page with a simple crtl+v, as was the way it worked with Word 2003? So how do I do that?
You may have had smaller default margins in your 2003 setup? Perhaps try setting the page margins to .5 instead of 1" before pasting and see if that helps.
If ZipperJJ’s idea doesn’t work, you can change the page size to be wider, edit then change the page size back. Or setting it temporarily to Landscape mode might work.
Isn’t there a way to make it like Word 2003, where all you have to do is crtl+v and the table fits? Is there a default ‘make it fit’ setting so anything pasted will automatically fit on the page?
There are many cut and paste options in the File Menu-> Options -> Advanced tab of Word. It looks like you need to change the “Pasting from other programs:” option.
I tried Keep Source Formatting (Default), which is what I started with. I tried Merge Formatting, and it also goes off the page. I tried Keep Text Only, which doesn’t paste the table.
What I’d like is to copy the 1-row, 4-column table from the browser, and crtl+v into a word document, and have the table fit within the boundaries of the page. In other words, I’d like crtl+v to work like it did in Word 2003.
I can get back to the 2003 format by right-clicking the pasted table and unclicking Preferred width, and then sliding the right border of the name cell to the right; but I’d rather have Word 2010 default to that format instead of having to go through the extra steps.
No, I’m copying from our online upload manager; i.e., a webpage.
I don’t see that option. I see Styles, but ‘Use destination style’ is not there. It basically looks like a bunch of different fonts. If I use Paste Special, I get the same three options that I get when I go to File Menu-> Options -> Advanced.
The way I usually solve this (yes, it happens to me a lot) is to click in the table after pasting into the Word doc. Then when the little shows up in the upper left corner of the table, click on that to select the whole table.
Then I right click on the table and choose table format. The tell it to make the table width 99% of the page width.
Or are those the hoops you’re already jumping through?
I don’t see a little in the upper-left corner; just the four-way arrows for moving the table around. (I can’t see the right side of the table.)
But basically, that’s what I’m doing. I right-click on the table, choose Table properties, uncheck Preferred width, and then slide the right border of the second cell to unwrap the name. Before, all I had to do was crtl+v and nothing else.
I do what Oldguy suggests. I tell the paper size to be 11 x 17, and maybe put it into landscape mode. Then maybe you can see the entire width of the table, and can shrink it by grabbing one of the corners and contracting it down into a smaller size. Once that’s done, you can go back and tell the document to be 8.5 x 11 again and portrait if that’s what you want.
If the table extends off the page regardless of the size you set the page at, there is either some funky formatting in the table or you have a funky style or something set in Word.
Try pasting the table into Excel first. If it looks OK there, then copy it from Excel and paste into Word. If it looks strange in Excel, there’s probably something odd in the original formatting.
ctrl+c, ctrl-v worked as expected on my old system. This problem (among others) only came about on the new system. Since the stuff I’m copying is not pasting correctly in Word 2010, whether I copy from Edge or Chrome, the problem is that Word 2010 is funky. Whether this is by design, or whether there is a setting I can change I don’t know. I’m hoping that there’s a setting I can change so that whenever I make a Word document it defaults to that setting.
That involves several more steps (opening Excel, pasting the table from the website, going to the Data tab, choosing text-to-columns, separating the cells, then copying and pasting into Word). And then it doesn’t really work. It fits on the page, but it looks like it’s just text. I like it to look like a table. Also, the name field is still wrapped – and there aren’t any visible cell borders to drag it open.
So the kludgy way I have to do it now is easier and quicker. But it would be better if there was a way to set defaults.
When I got stuck with stuff like this, my default was to load the troublesome file into the open office software offered by adobe, set it up for basic formatting and then save it in whatever file type you need. Sometimes just copying the file into Open Office fixes the formatting issues in the original document
I realize this is not what you are trying to do. I spent a lot of time merging stuff from older software into new documents. Sometimes finding a shortcut can take longer than j just doing the kludge.
Tables are rarely used on the web anymore. They’ve been replaced with div tags in HTML 5, and their formatting is defined under CSS. When you copy, Word isn’t copying those styles. It defaults to its own table style, which isn’t necessarily what you want.
I know that’s not what you want to hear, but I run into this all the time. I found the best method is to create a new table, then copy and paste one cell at a time.
Your other option is to take a screenshot with the Snipping Tool (if you’re using Windows 10) and paste the table as an image. You won’t be able to do any editing though.
