Blackboard
General Tutorial
Pasting Text from Microsoft Word into
Blackboard
Copying text from Microsoft Word and pasting it directly into Blackboard can be extremely problematic.
As such, a tool is available within Blackboard that helps to remediate any potential issues with
copied/pasted text while retaining source formatting. It is critically important to use this tool each
time text is copied and pasted from Microsoft Word into Blackboard. See the Copy/Paste Best
Practices tutorial for more tips and pointers related to general copy/paste.
1. Begin by copying the desired text from Microsoft Word.
2. In Blackboard, place your computer’s cursor in the text box in which the text is to be pasted.
3. Click on the Add Mashup button
Word.
(located on 3rd row of Text Editor toolbar) and click Paste from
4. Click on the Paste from Word button
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5. Click in the textbox to activate the cursor and paste the text that was previously copied from
Microsoft Word.
6. Click Ok.
7. Click Submit.
8. The copied/pasted text should now appear in the textbox editor.
Frequently Asked Questions
Q1. This seems like an extra step to me. Why is this necessary?
A1. When text is copied from Microsoft Word and pasted directly into Blackboard, unsupported
Microsoft Word-specific formatting code is almost always included. While this is not visible on the
‘surface’ of the text, switching the text editor to HTML mode will reveal this code (see screenshots
below). This code can cause a multitude of issues, including, but not limited to, the following:
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Students being prematurely removed from exams/quizzes
General browser instability
Truncated text
Skewed text formatting
Random font size/style changes
Slow course load times
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Copied/Pasted Text from Microsoft Word (Surface View)
Copied/Pasted Text from Microsoft Word (HTML View)
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