Information Technology Services

by Curt Price

For those of you who use Cascade (SIUE's website content management system) to update and maintain your department's website, you probably do a fair amount of copying text and pasting it into a page in Cascade.

Did you know there is a RIGHT and a WRONG way to do this? And that pasting text the WRONG way into Cascade can cause some serious problems with your web page?

Sometimes, when you copy text from somewhere, you're also copying the formatting that goes along with that text, such as bold content, headings, links, different fonts, different size fonts, proprietary code, etc. Microsoft Word is a common place for people to copy content from before pasting it into Cascade. But copying content from Microsoft Word (and other web pages, or applications, etc) and pasting it into an editor like the one in Cascade, can cause issues and errors because the editor doesn't like certain kinds of code formatting that you are copying along with the text.

So what do you do? Well, fear not. You can still copy from Microsoft Word (or websites, or other applications) and paste into Cascade. And there are a couple of ways to do this properly.

Option 1: PASTING AS PLAIN TEXT

• Copy the text you want to use
• Open the page in Cascade where you want to paste the text
• Edit the page to access the editor
• Go to the 'Edit' pulldown menu
• Select "Paste as Plain Text"
• Place the cursor in the editor where you want the text to go
• Click 'CTRL-V' to paste the text into the editor as plain text

Doing this will strip off all of the formatting attached to the text and the text will be pasted as plain old text. Which is generally what you want.

However with Option 1, if you have a lot of links and formatted text (bolded items, links, headings, etc) in the content you are copying, you'll have to recreate all of that formatting within Cascade. Which isn't ideal... and can take up quite a bit of time. But fear not... again. There is an Option 2.

Option 2: PASTING CLEAN HTML
If you have a lot of formatting you want to preserve in your source document (bold items, links, headings, etc) you can convert your copied text to "Clean HTML". This will strip out all of the problem coding, and just leave clean HTML while preserving all of the formatting in a way that plays well with the Cascade editor.

• Copy the text you want to use
• In your web browser, go to: https://word2cleanhtml.com
• Paste the text you copied into the area that says "Paste your document here"
• Leave the following default check boxes checked:
  • Remove empty paragraphs
  • Convert <b> to <strong> <i> to <em>
  • Replace non-breaking spaces with ordinary spaces
• Click the "Convert to clean html" button.
• You will be given "clean html" code in the "clean html" tab. (don't worry, you don't have to understand HTML to do this)
• Copy all of that code.
• Open up your Cascade editor to the page you want to edit
• Click on the "Source Code" widget/button in your editor's toolbar. It should look like this: "<>"
• Paste your copied clean html code into the source view.
• If you already have content on that page, then you can paste the clean html at the very top in the source view by putting your cursor at the very top and beginning of the code (before all of the code) and hitting 'Enter' a couple times to give you some spaces at the top. Then put your cursor back at the very top and paste the clean html there.
• Hit 'OK' to go back to your WYSIWYG view. (the view you normally see... which stands for 'What You See Is What You Get')
• Then you can 'Cut' (CTRL-X) the newly pasted content that now appears at the top and then paste it wherever you need it to go within the page. (if you're fluent in HTML, then you can just copy the clean html where it's supposed to go within the source view, but if you don't know html, or aren't quite sure... then this is an easy way to be sure)

That's it. Your copied text will no longer cause any issues with the Cascade editor. PLUS, your text will play nicely with the existing style sheets in Cascade... which is important.

Remember, if you have any questions on how to do this, or anything else in SIUE's Cascade CMS, feel free to contact Cascade Support in ITS at x5500.