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Avoid pasting your content directly from Word

Avoid pasting your content directly from Word

When copying and pasting text into an article for your web site, it is much better to make use of a plain text editor rather than copying content directly from Microsoft Word.
When adding articles or any text to your web site, it is much better to use a plain text editor, or the text editor that is integrated into Joomla, rather than using Microsoft Word. When you use Word, you get a whole bunch of unnecessary "junk" in your otherwise clean source code (the behind-the-scenes elements that makes your page display). This, in turn, can make your page sizes unnecessarily large and bloated, causing them to load less quickly (more info).

Alternatively, you can also copy the content from Word, paste it into Notepad, or another plain text editor (which will remove all the Word junk), then copy the content from Notepad into your web page. This is helpful if you receive an item from someone that is already in Word and you want to use the content in your article.

Here is an example

We'll use the same sentence, one pasted from Word and the other from Notepad, and show you what the code looks like for each example.

First, the sentence pasted from Notepad:

This web site provides help with web site management questions that everyone asks, and is a great resource to check when you need help. They offer great web sites, search engine optimization and use Joomla for all web sites developed.<br />

Now, the same sentence pasted from Word (get ready to scroll):

<meta content="text/html; charset=utf-8" http-equiv="Content-Type" />
<meta content="Word.Document" name="ProgId" />
<meta content="Microsoft Word 12" name="Generator" />
<meta content="Microsoft Word 12" name="Originator" />
<link href="file:///C:\Users\CHRIS~1.BEN\AppData\Local\Temp\msohtmlclip1\01\clip_filelist.xml" rel="File-List" />
<link href="file:///C:\Users\CHRIS~1.BEN\AppData\Local\Temp\msohtmlclip1\01\clip_preview.wmf" rel="Preview" />
<link href="file:///C:\Users\CHRIS~1.BEN\AppData\Local\Temp\msohtmlclip1\01\clip_themedata.thmx" rel="themeData" />
<link href="file:///C:\Users\CHRIS~1.BEN\AppData\Local\Temp\msohtmlclip1\01\clip_colorschememapping.xml" rel="colorSchemeMapping" /><style type="text/css">

</style>
<p class="MsoNormal">This web site provides help with web site management questions that everyone asks, and is a great resource to check when you need help. They offer great web sites, search engine optimization and use Joomla for all web sites developed.</p>
<br />
<br />
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8">
<meta name="ProgId" content="Word.Document">
<meta name="Generator" content="Microsoft Word 12">
<meta name="Originator" content="Microsoft Word 12">        </meta>
</meta>
</meta>
</meta>

If you made it this far...

If you're still reading, if you made it down this far, you'll understand why it's not such a good idea to paste your content from Word. Sure, it's the fast easy thing to do if your posting an article from a Word document or an email your boss sent you. However, you'll be glad you took the extra millisecond to clean up the code in the long run.