Microsoft Word just fixed its default paste option

Have you ever pasted text into your beautifully formatted Microsoft Word document, only for it to ruin everything? Well, the days of the should finally be over, as Microsoft Word will now merge the text’s formatting with your document by default.

Unlike the previous “keep source formatting” default, the “merge formatting” option preserves the original bold and underlined text, along with list and table structure. But it also changes the visual aspects of the text, such as font family, size, and color, to match the document you’re working on. That should save you from messing up the formatting of your entire document when pasting in text from another source.

You could previously choose the “merge formatting” option from Word’s pasting menu, but it wasn’t the default. If you still want to use the “keep source formatting” option as the default, you can change it by heading to File > Options > Advanced > Cut, copy, and paste and then selecting the Pasting from other program drop-down menu. From there, choose Keep Source Formatting.

Last year, Microsoft finally started supporting the Control + Shift + V shortcut, which lets you paste in text without formatting at all.