Hi everyone,

I've just spent the best part of 40 minutes trying to post a poem without success. Cutting and pasting from word - with all the formatting being messed up.

Any ideas?

Tried posting from an Ipad via Pages - messed the formating up, tried emailing myself the poem - accessing via the cpu and copying and pasting from google docs - that messed up. fixed all the formating - putting the poem into microsoft word and did a copy and paste - that messed up.

Losing the will to live lol

Is it a very tricky format, Chris?

Hi Greg, thx for the reply.

Erm no, the for at is straightforward. In copying & pasting from Pages or Office 2 HD, two of the more popular Ipad word processing apps, the formatting is messed up - double spacing added.

When I copied the poem into Microsoft Word and cut and paste from there the formatting was totally removed and the poem posted with no lines breaks, as one might expect with a piece of prose.

Obviously I just wanted to lift the poem inclusive of the format laid out, as in correct lines breaks. Technology, technology, the world over haha.

Any pointers would be appreciated..thx.

Chris

Chris, our technical expert Paul says: "We don't support importing from other software with formatting and aren't likely to. My advice would always be to write without formatting and then format in our editor afterwards." Hope that helps?

So no copying and pasting from any programs then - the need to write the poem from scratch in the message box? Really surprised as this used to be supposed on the site and it is a basic function in every single word processing application in the world, including basic note/notepad programs...

If that's the case, that will seriously curtail how much I post;
as I don't have the time to re-write poems I've already written. Too little time already to write poems once, as in, in the first place, especially when also running two poetry nights a month.

A shame - i'd have liked to have post more work.

Thx anyway, for the reply and looking into it for me - appreciated.

I can certainly still copy and paste, Chris, when last I looked. But then Write Out Loud is playing up on my upstairs PC, which is ages old, but fine on my downstairs laptop. So what do I know?

But what use is copy and paste if it ditches your line breaks, or throws the poem into double spacing etc?

If it takes more time to fight with a poem, to re-jig it and put in all the correct line breaks or remove double spacing etc...if to do all that it takes longer than to write the poem out from scratch - then you might as well just write the poem out from scratch in the space provided - right?

That is significant, it makes all the difference.

If you can copy and paste a poem that you have spent months editing and getting just right, if you can simply have that mirrored/ported across to the software - then adding your work/poem takes seconds.

If you can't do that, then like I say, you have to either copy and paste and spend all that time fighting to get the poem into some order or, possibly quicker, hand-copy the poem. This can take a significant amount of time, especially if you wish to retain a very tight editorial control/do not wish to poorly represent yourself, by making an error.

One takes seconds, the other can take so long as to make it prohibitive if you have limited time. I'd always rather not post a poem, rather than risk an error in re-writing something or fighting with formatting issues.

Can you see what I mean?

A really basic copy & paste function that retains the format of a major program such as Microsoft Word would make a big difference. Ipad support for Pages/Office 2 HD, would be a bonus.

P.S

It's all very odd though because sometimes the formatting is lifted correctly, and sometimes it isn't.

It's a pain. Not WOL particularly, have you tried any BLOG? And Gmail is unfriendly. I have taken to putting soft carriage returns at ends of lines, <<CRTL RET>> and full returns at end of stanzas. That and putting a few returns before and after text then cutting the whole lot can help. Not too onerous to log back in and edit afterwards, and spaces instead of tabs... it is a pain! Says I.

Oh...

None of my comments are remotely meant to cause any offence, by the way. Flat communication and all that - Sorry if anything like that came across in trying to explain the issue.

I know people put in for nowt and the site and events are quality.

Some days tech is just a real pain - here, there and everywhere. As a former computer software tester, designer and producer, I probably get more irked than most. Usually at the little things...always seems the way.

Best