Crafting your form or email content directly in the Visual Editor is the best way of ensuring that it looks exactly the way you want.

Of course, you or your designer may provide content in an external word processor such as Microsoft Word or Google Docs. Below are considerations for pasting from an external rich text editor.

Paste and Retain Formatting

To copy that content into a Text Element in Engage and retain the original formatting, press CTRL+V on your keyboard when using Windows or CMD+V on your keyboard when using a Mac.

Pasting in this way maintains most Microsoft Word and Google Docs text formatting while converting the structure to a cleaner HTML code. There are some exceptions related to advanced styling, customizations, or other special formatting which are not supported by HTML. For example, the Visual Editor will use standard bullets from the bullet library and will not use a double strikethrough effect. Such elements are replaced by the default ones to resemble your original content in the best way possible. When no alternative is available, the formatting will be removed.

When pasting from Microsoft Word, the Visual Editor will retain the following:

• Text formatting
  • Text and highlight colors
  • Font name (if it's a font we support), style and size (translated into pixels)
  • Basic formatting (bold, italic, underline)
  • Font effects (strikethrough, superscript, subscript)
  • Heading levels
  • Text alignment
• Lists
  • Numbered and bulleted lists
  • Multilevel lists
  • Different numbering formats (Roman, decimal, alphanumeric)
  • Custom start number (e.g. you can start the list from number 4)
• Tables
  • Borders and shading
  • Cell size (width and height)
  • Cell alignment
• Images
• Paste from Excel
  • Cell formatting (size, background, borders, special characters)
  • Row and column size
  • Text formatting (as listed above)
• Advanced formatting
  • Default styles
  • User-defined styles

When pasting from Google Docs, the Visual Editor will retain the following:

• Text formatting
  • Text and highlight colors
  • Font family (if it's a font we support), style and size (translated into pixels)
  • Basic formatting (bold, italic, underline)
  • Font effects (strikethrough, superscript, subscript)
  • Heading levels
  • Text alignment
• Lists
  • Numbered and bulleted lists
  • Multilevel lists
  • Different numbering formats (Roman, decimal, alphanumeric)
  • Custom start number (e.g. you can start the list from number 4)
• Tables
  • Borders and shading
  • Cell size (width and height)
  • Cell alignment
• Images

Paste as Plain Text

To paste content as Plain Text from Microsoft Word, Google Docs, or any other Rich Text Editor, press CTRL+SHIFT+V on your keyboard when using Windows or CMD+SHIFT+V on your keyboard when use a Mac. Pasting in this way strips out styling, special formatting, links, and other special characters -- leaving only the text.

Alternatively, you can use Notepad, TextEdit, Word to Clean HTML, or EditPad as an intermediary.

1. Open Notepad, TextEdit, EditPad, or the plain text editor of your choice.
2. Open the Salsa Engage Activity or Email into which you want to paste content.
3. Open the content that you want to copy in your rich text editor (for example, Microsoft Word).
4. Copy the content that you want to use.
5. Click to the plain text editor and paste in your content. Sometimes you can paste without formatting, depending on the tool. Check the edit menu in your software.
6. Run the process in that plain text editor to strip hidden formatting, if necessary.
7. Copy the text from the plain text editor.
8. Click to the Salsa Engage Activity or Email, and paste in the content.