Tom’s Tuesday Tech Tip: Certified Legal Nurse Consultants – You Too Can Cut, Paste and Paint!

One of the most common frustrations using Microsoft^® Word is what happens when you paste information from one document into another. All CLNC^® consultants know Word likes to reformat to a style of its choice – often without regard to either the style of the document you’re in or the one you’re pasting from.

There are times when Certified Legal Nurse Consultants are writing reports and have to re-invent the wheel, but there are more times when we create a new document by cutting and pasting relevant information from one or more old documents or web pages. This makes this “reformatting habit” of Word extremely annoying. I think all my CLNC^® amigos know what I’m talking about. Word has a limited “reveal codes” option that won’t help much in this situation. Instead it offers a solution that is even simpler.

Let’s say you pasted some portion of an outline or bulleted list of deviations from the standard of care from a prior legal nurse consulting report into a report for a different attorney-client. Now you’ve got two mixed fonts and formats in your Word document.

Instead of pulling out your hair, simply look for the “Format Painter” button on your Menu Bar or Ribbon. Next, hold down the left mouse button and highlight a full paragraph of text, list or outline that is correctly formatted. Then let go of that left mouse button and while that text is still highlighted, left click on the “Format Painter” button. Your cursor will turn into a little paintbrush. Use that “paintbrush” to “paint” or highlight over the incorrectly formatted text by holding down that left mouse button. When you let go of that left mouse button Word will reformat the new text to match the old. Cut, paste and paint. It’s just that simple!

Keep on techin’,