[bthom70]

OK newbie switcher/slider here.
I use both XP and OSX.

I'm a Grad School student and do ALOT of research on the web.
I often have to copy and paste text and URL's into my papers.
When I copy the text from Firefox into Office 2004 Word it copies in using font Lucida Grande.
I then have to change it to Times Roman or something else.
How do I change the font in OSX?

But I find it weird that when copy/paste in XP and Firefox it copies fine.
Except for the odd website that uses an obscure font, then it would use that font, normally a copy/past would paste as time new roman.

Another user suggested paste special in Word.
How do I do paste special? key combo?

[TETENAL]

In TextEdit the command you are looking for is called "Paste and Match Style" and has the key combo ⌥⇧⌘V. See the Edit menu. In Word there might be this or a similar command. Look into the Edit menu of Word for it (I don't have Word, so I can't tell you exactly).

[JKT]

This is because Mac OS X, by default, preserves the style and formatting when it copies and pastes text. To paste the text in Word and have it adopt the format of the document, use the Paste Special command. If it doesn't have a shortcut and you would like one for it, assign one yourself.

[bthom70]

"This is because Mac OS X, by default, preserves the style and formatting when it copies and pastes text."
No, because the webpage is not Lucida Grande, OSX is changing it to Lucida Grande when it copys that text into memory.
That combined with the 4, yes count them 4 key stoke combination to copy special text.
Way to go Jobs et al, thats a real winner.


Only another one of my little peeves now that I'm a slider/switcher

[JKT]

Well, could it be a bug or shortcoming in FireFox then? What happens if you use Safari or another browser - does the text paste in the incorrect format then?

FWIW, in Office you can pick your own keyboard combination for menu items - go to Tools>Customise...>Customise Keyboard...

In the dialogue that opens, in the categories pane select Edit and in the Commands pane, select EditPasteSpecial.

Choose the keyboard shortcut you want to use (it will tell you if it is already assigned or not) and select Assign. E.g. I chose command-shift-V (already assigned to PasteFromScrapbook but I never do that anyway) and assigned it. This makes com-shift-V the shortcut for Paste Special in Word (and removes it from PasteFromScrapbook, fwiw).

Little peeves are an inevitable consequence of having to readjust your mind set to a new system. Believe me, the way Windows does (or doesn't do) a lot of things is unbelievably annoying when you are primarily a Mac user. You just get used to them once you become more familiar with them... some, however, just bug the hell out of you no matter how long you've been using either system because they so damnably stupid On the whole though, Mac OS is far less annoying.