Sorry, guys... I'm posting here out of desparation.

This seems so silly, I'm beyond baffled. It is 3 in the morning, but still...

So, I've created a simple blank layout as I have before, and I go to paste text copied from a MS Word doc into the layout and nothing happens.

I've done this before!! I looked at another layout that I did this in, and I can't see anything different about it...

This should be a no brainer!?

What the heck...

?

Sorry Nate, nothing is coming to mind... are you sure the Word content is copied (can you paste it elsewhere)?

Yes, it's copied.

The wierd thing is, I can paste it into Excel, then recopy, and then it WILL paste into FMP.

?

Nate wrote:Yes, it's copied.

The wierd thing is, I can paste it into Excel, then recopy, and then it WILL paste into FMP.

?

If you are on a Mac and have recently upgraded to Tiger, then that is the reason. There is some problem with clipboard exchange in FMP7v3 on Tiger.

I'm on a Mac, and on Tiger, but I have not upgraded since this worked previously.

And why would it work from Excel?

Nate wrote:And why would it work from Excel?

Clipboard in OS X has three sections - Styled Text, Unicode, and RTF. When you copy a text the application you copy from should copy it to each of these sections. I believe Word does not fill one of them, and FMP suppose it to be filled. So, Excel takes your text from one section of the clipboard and FMP tries to take it from another one, which is empty.

When you recopy text through Excel it either changes format of the text or place it to correct section of the clipboard, so FMP can take it.

Interesting. Thanks.

I'm quite surprised that this has not been addressed. I would suspect that MOST people creating templates within FMP are converting from a different system, and as such are attempting to copy and paste. Because most people use MS Word for their word processor, I can't imagine this hasn't become a huge issue.

Perhaps they've addressed it in FMP 8.

Bad news? I just went out and spent a bunch of money on several plug ins that are now "built in" to FMP 8. GRRRRRRR

Good news? They addressed most of my major frustrations with their products, with a couple new pleasant surprises.

Try defining a text field, then creating a blank layout. You can even give them the same name. When adding your new field to your new layout (in layout mode), adjust to your desired size. After that, you can switch to browser mode and copy your Word text into your field.

Hope this helps. It may or may not be the answer you need.

Thanks for the thought...

Problem with that route is that you can't enter merge fields into your text, which is the whole point of using FMP for the templates in the first place.

Good news, though. FMP8 did the paste in Layout mode directly from MS Word with no problem at all.


YIPEE!!!!