[Solved] Text color of copy/pasted text is changed

[JNygren]

I opened two .docx documents in Writer. I copied all of the contents of the first document (CTRL-A, CTRL-C), and pasted it (CTRL-V) at the end of the second document. All of the text in both of the original documents was Black (Automatic). Some of the pasted paragraphs are light blue, although Font Color is still set to Automatic. I tried using the Formatting Paintbrush to copy formatting from a paragraph in the original text to one of the blue paragraphs. The paragraph I was trying to format was not changed, but the paragraph following it now turned blue, too. What is going on?! How do I get my text font color to behave normally again?

[Bill]

Check the font cooler settings in the paragraph style applied to the paragraphs and/or the font color settings for each individual paragraph. Without an actual document, all we can do is guess about the settings.

[YODA]

Blue in my experience is usually used for Hyperlinks do your docx files contain any? If they do that may be the answer

[JNygren]

The font color for all paragraphs in the document is 'Automatic'. There are no links, or anything that could be interpreted as a link. This is a lighter blue than hyperlinks.

Thanks.

[robleyd]

As Bill said, without seeing the actual document, it is guesswork. Are you able to make available (a copy of) the document, showing the issues?

[Forum] How to attach a document here Note maximum file size is 128K. If your file is larger, use a file sharing site such as Mediafire and post the link here. The link also contains information on how to anonymise your document if it contains confidential information.

[Zizi64]

The font color for all paragraphs in the document is 'Automatic'. There are no links, or anything that could be interpreted as a link. This is a lighter blue than hyperlinks.

And how many different paragraph styles and character styles are you using in the documents?

[RoryOF]

Might it be due to "Track changes"?

[Bill]

Might it be due to "Track changes"?

That was my first thought, but that would affect all paragraphs not just some. Also, the the pasted text would become underlined and there is no mention of that.

I tried using the Formatting Paintbrush to copy formatting from a paragraph in the original text to one of the blue paragraphs. The paragraph I was trying to format was not changed, but the paragraph following it now turned blue, too.

I don't know why that would happen. The Format Paintbrush only works within a document. It doesn't copy from one document and paste in a different document. Maybe you accidentally copied the format from the preceding paragraph and pasted it to the one that changed.

[JNygren]

Ok, Here is the document. (Readings 12-02.doc)
And here is a view of what it looks like to me. (View.png)

My comments about Formatting Paintbrush refer to copying the format of the second, non-blank paragraph, and applying it to the sixth non-blank paragraph. The result was that the formatting of the sixth paragraph was not changed, but the seventh paragraph which at the time was black, was changed to blue.

I think it's pretty obvious what was in the original first document, and what was copied from the second document.

Thank you for your help. I appreciate it.

[Zizi64]

".docx", ".doc":

Always use the native, international Standard ODF file formats for your important documents.

[jrkrideau]

Your first Reading is using the Default Style and the Second Reading is using Heading 3 Style. Heading 3 is defined as having a blue font in your document.

It appears that you have manually formatted the First Reading as the text seems to be Arial 14 while the Default Style says that it is Calibri 11

You might find this useful https://wiki.openoffice.org/wiki/Docume ... _Templates

As others have pointed out, it is not good practice or even reasonably safe to save in a foreign format such as .doc or .docx. It is much better to always save in .odt.

[John_Ha]

See [Tutorial] Differences between Writer and MS Word files for why you should always work in and save files as .odt.

[Bill]

Check the settings for the Heading 3 paragraph styles in both documents. I suspect that the first document has the font color set to black so it doesn't require any direct formatting to change it to black while the second document has the color set to blue and direct formatting must be applied to each paragraph to change the font color of that paragraph to black. That would cause the font color in any Heading 3 paragraph to change from black to blue when pasting into the second document..

[JNygren]

Thank you for solving the blue font mystery.

Interestingly, in the document I copied the text from, Heading 3 is apparently not blue.