How to always paste with formatting in Word 2019

In Word 2019, you can still paste with formatting from other sources, but it now requires a little effort. Word 2019 Build 17624.20000 has changed how the copy & paste feature works by default. With that build and onward, the famous text processor app no longer saves formatting copied from an external source. It now only keeps a limited set of text attributes like bold and italics, in addition to lists and tables.

Earlier, when you copy some fragment of a web page or file and then paste it in your Word document, the source formatting is retained along with the content. But starting in May 2024, this has changed. Once you install Office updates, you will notice that Word stars removing the original appearance of the source data. This happens to any of the text source, including a web browser or any another application. The change mostly affects those who often copy web pages to the clipboard, as Word now removes a significant number of the HTML tags, so the pasted fragment looks quite different.

Keep source formatting when paste in Word

To paste with formatting of the source in Word 2019, do the following.

1. Copy the formatted data, say a text block from a web page.
2. Switch to Word, and right-click the place where you want to insert the copied fragment.
3. From the right-click menu, choose the "Keep source formatting" icon from the available icons.
4. You have successfully placed the text from the clipboard with the original formatting.

You may find inconvenient to always use the context menu every time you want to keep the original markup of the source document. Luckily, Word 2019 retains an option to go back to the previous old behavior. Here are the steps

Always paste with original formatting in Word 2019

To always keep source formatting when paste text in Word, do the following.

1. Click on File and select Options from the menu.
2. In the left, click Advanced.
3. Now, scroll down the right pane to Cut, copy and paste.
4. Change the Paste from other programs option to Keep source formatting.
5. You can also review the other paste options to ensure that they match your expectations.

Done! From now on, when you copy - paste content from external apps, the Word app will keep the original formatting presented in the source document.

That's it!