Microsoft Word just fixed its default paste option

Have you ever pasted text into your beautifully formatted Microsoft Word document, only to mess it up? Well the days of should have finally ended, as Microsoft Word will now merge text formatting with your document by default.

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

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