eduBuzz blogs now have a “Paste from Word” editor button.

Up till now, if you pasted content from Word then you’d often end up with odd-looking results. That happened because pasting brought over not just the content you wanted, and structural information like tables, but also formatting information, such as fonts and font sizes. Ideally, we want the blog’s theme to control presentation to keep posts looking consistent.

The WordPress Plain Text plugin, suggested by Ollie Bray, provides an alternative solution. Because this is such a common problem, we’ve installed it as a site-wide plugin.

The key benefit it brings is the ability to include tables in blog posts and pages in a way that avoids any need to use HTML.

Here’s an example of pasting from a Word document using the tool.

EAST LOTHIAN COUNCIL

Department of Education & Children’s Services

SCHOOL SESSION DATES - 2007/2008

Staff		Pupils
	TERM 1
Staff Resume	Thursday 16 August 2007		(In-service Day 1)
	Friday 17 August 2007		(In-service Day 2)
	Monday 20 August 2007	Pupils Resume	(Start of Term 1)
Staff Break	Friday 14 September 2007	Pupils Break
Autumn Holiday	Monday 17 September 2007	Autumn Holiday
Staff Resume	Tuesday 18 September 2007	Pupils Resume
Staff Break	Friday 12 October 2007	Pupils Break
Staff Resume	Monday 22 October 2007		(In-service Day 3)
	Tuesday 23 October 2007	Pupils Resume
Staff Break *= 86 days*	Friday 21 December 2007	Pupils Break *= 83 days*	(End of Term 1)
	TERM 2
Staff Resume	Monday 7 January 2008	Pupils Resume	(Start of Term 2)
Staff Break	Friday 8 February 2008	Pupils Break
Staff Resume	Wednesday 13 February 2008		(In-service Day 4)
	Thursday 14 February 2008	Pupils Resume
Staff Break	Thursday 20 March 2008	Pupils Break	(End of Term 2)
*Good Friday*	Friday 21 March 2008
*Easter Monday* *= 52 days*	Monday 24 March 2008	*= 51 days*
	TERM 3

Staff Resume	Tuesday 8 April 2008	Pupils Resume	(Start of Term 3)
*Staff Break*	Friday 18 April 2008	*Pupils Break*
*Edinburgh Holiday*	Monday 21 April 2008
*Staff Resume*	Tuesday 22 April 2008	*Pupils Resume*
*May DayHoliday***	Monday 5 May 2008	*May DayHoliday***
Staff Resume	Tuesday 6 May 2008		(In-service Day 5)
	Wednesday 7 May 2008	Pupils Resume
Staff Break *= 57 days* *Total - 195 days*	Friday 27 June 2008	Pupils Break =56 days Total - 190 days	(End of Term 3)