<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<page xmlns="http://projectmallard.org/1.0/" type="topic" style="task" id="textselection" xml:lang="en_GB">

  <info>
    <link type="guide" xref="index#faq"/>
    <desc>When you copy text, the text that is pasted might be different from what you had selected.</desc>

    <revision pkgversion="3.2" version="0.1" date="2011-09-05" status="final"/>
    <credit type="author">
      <name>Phil Bull</name>
      <email>philbull@gmail.com</email>
    </credit>
    <license>
      <p>Creative Commons Share Alike 3.0</p>
    </license>

  </info>

<title>Why didn't the text I selected copy properly?</title>


<p>
If you highlight and copy text from a document using the <app>document viewer</app> and then paste it into another
application, the formatting may alter.  It may also contain different characters than the original selection. This often happens when copying text from a PDF document with multiple columns.
</p>


 <p>
  This problem happens because of how some document formats handle text.
  The actual text in the document is stored differently from the way it is
  displayed. This may result in a copy that does not appear as expected.
 </p>

 <p>
  Unfortunately, there is no real way of fixing this problem. Copying
  less text at a time, or copying the text into a text editor (like <app>gedit</app>) may minimize the problem.
  </p>

</page>
