[Issue] Copy only the selected text from a numbered list?

[Protonus]

Our company has switched to OpenOffice Writer, from MS Word. Something that I have to do every day, is select text from a numbered list in Writer, copy it to the clipboard, and paste it into a variety of other applications.

For whatever reason, when copying the text in Writer, even though I haven't selected the number in the numbered list, it still copies the number from the list, along with the text I've selected, instead of just the selected text?!

In later versions of MS Word that did this, they had an option to turn this off called "Keep Text Only".

I've been all over the Writer application and can't figure out how to shut this off in Writer, and it's infuriating (why is this default functionality!?). Right now I am pasting the text including the extra numbers, into notepad, then re-copying only what I needed, then pasting it into the third app.

I have searched around here and the only similar things I've found recommend people to use "Paste Special". However, I'm not pasting INTO Writer and the other applications don't have this option. What I need I guess is a "Copy Special"?!

[acknak]

Hi and welcome to the community forum!

Sorry, I don't think there's any way around it. At least I don't know of any way.

The only workaround I can think of is to use a temporary/scratch Writer document: paste into the scratch document, turn off numbering, then copy/paste into the other document. I guess you could just as well skip the scratch document and turn off the numbering in the original document before you copy the items--just remember to not save the source document afterwards.

I believe, even if you used paste special as unformatted text, you still get the numbering, so I don't think that would help, even if you had that as an option.

[Protonus]

I appreciate you replying. Where would the best place be to submit this as a feature/change request? It seems a rather terrible oversight.

[acknak]

See [Tutorial] Reporting bugs or suggestions

This open issue seems pretty close:
Issue 63827: Copy/Paste unformated text of a numbering styled text
You can register there and add your vote (up to two) or comment.

Another workaround: Paste the numbered item into a paragraph with some existing text--type a space or an 'x' first and then paste the numbered item. In that case, Writer applies the paragraph formatting of the existing, non-empty text which overrides the list formatting.

[Protonus]

See [Tutorial] Reporting bugs or suggestions

This open issue seems pretty close:
Issue 63827: Copy/Paste unformated text of a numbering styled text
You can register there and add your vote (up to two) or comment.

Another workaround: Paste the numbered item into a paragraph with some existing text--type a space or an 'x' first and then paste the numbered item. In that case, Writer applies the paragraph formatting of the existing, non-empty text which overrides the list formatting.

Thank you, yes, it looks like that's the issue, though they're seeing it basically for the opposite reason. Looks like many reports of it were closed as duplicate, but the original is from 2006! I gave it some votes, and had the other people here using it do the same.

Thank you for the link.