Idea Delivered

With the release of SDL Tridion Sites 9.5 we have updated our Rich Text editor, which brings Paste and Paste special functionality back into the product. The use case is for a "clean" paste from a word processor such as Word.

Improved Paste Functionality

Improve the paste functionality for RTFs because the results of the paste operation are currently inconsistent.

Editors want the ability to paste plain text, keep source formatting, or to match the styling of the destination (keep only select markup, but not styles from the srouce). Developers and organizations want the ability to restrict non-approved markup (no Word-specific attributes).

Chris Chrcek

  • Each Rich Text Field capability is configured in the schema.

    For Copy/Paste operations you have full control over the markup that is allowed but adding an XSLT filter.

    Judging from the number of questions about this on the Tridion stack exchange, this is an area where people struggle.

    Check out my article on this Remove unwanted markup with XSLT filter templates, it was written over ten years ago but still applies today. Relaxed

    See SDL documentation Creating a format area for more details .

  • The UI previously had specific paste options to paste as plain text or keep formatting, however browsers changed which prevented programatic access we relied on. This is something we'd like to revisit to match expectations for pasting with rich text.

    Please report or submit the defect, either with your IT organization (if you happen to have extensions for rich text formatting) or through SDL Support.

  • We have a few use cases that are associated to Paste Functionality.

    - When copy & paste from a MS Word document, additional MS Word unwanted metadata and formatting is included in the paste. It is not apparent in the editor pane, but when viewing the source, you can see additional code.

    One idea to solve for this is to create feature for paste controls, e.g.  keep source formatting, apply destination formatting; paste simple text.

    - When copy/pasting bullet lists from a Word document to an RTF Tridion adds addition BR tags to the source which creates extra spaces and affects the formatting.  Users must edit source code in order to remove these extra tags which is not a good content editing experience and, in our case, not within normal scope of content editor’s role.

    - This one is  more of a defect; if the user clicks the GREEN + button to add a second RTF field, the 2nd RTF (and all additional fields added by using the GREEN + button) will not use the proper copy/paste rules that authors expect.  The new text will no longer use the proper <br> and <p> tags as expected by authors.