Copy/Paste Best Practices. Identifying Issues Caused by Copy/Paste. Blackboard General Tutorial

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1 Blackboard General Tutorial Copy/Paste Best Practices Often times, it may be easier to compose something in a text editor and then copy and paste it into Blackboard. Further, text from external sources (e.g. websites) may be desired in Blackboard and can easily be re-created using copy/paste. While copying/pasting may be convenient, there are a couple of points to consider when doing this. These points are critically important when copying and pasting text from Microsoft Word into Blackboard. Identifying Issues Caused by Copy/Paste It is important to note that not all copying/pasting will render problems inside of Blackboard, but there are several symptoms that will generally indicate a problem. Some of these symptoms are: Large amounts of students are prematurely removed from an exam as a result of browser instability. Blackboard course pages appear to load slowly, often times taxing available system resources. In online exams, questions containing extraneous code created by copying/pasting from Microsoft Word may be completely omitted when students begin completing the exam. Text-heavy items are slow to load and often render line by line rather than all at once. Formatting of text is skewed. When text has been copied from within Blackboard and pasted elsewhere in Blackboard, duplicate buttons may appear for instructors and instructor-only buttons may appear to students. Font changes occur in seemingly random places. Items are underlined that are not normally underlined. If any of the above symptoms are noticed, or copy/paste issues are believed to be present, the easiest way to confirm this is to find the textbox in which the text is located and switch it to HTML view. This will show the underlying code behind the text itself. To do this, click on the < > button which appears in the second row of the textbox editor toolbar. C o p y / P a s t e B e s t P r a c t i c e s - P a g e 1

2 If multiple lines of code are present (see screenshot), the text should be cleaned of the code using the procedure outlined below. NOTE: Some formatting code is generated by the textbox editor itself. Copied/pasted code can usually be distinguished from textbox-generated code by the amount of code present. Copied/pasted text will generally contain more complex and lengthier code than text formatted by the options in the textbox. The Example-2 code shown below is OK and will not cause a problem, however Example-1 shows problematic code which should be removed. Text copied/pasted from Microsoft Word (Problematic) Example 1 Text generated using the textbox editor (OK)- Example 2 C o p y / P a s t e B e s t P r a c t i c e s - P a g e 2

3 Remediating Pre-Existing Copied/Pasted Text NOTE: If copying/pasting text from Microsoft Word, see the Pasting Text from Microsoft Word tutorial for an alternate and more efficient method If text has been identified as containing extraneous code using the method outlined above, then it should be cleaned to leave only plain text in the textbox editor. NOTE: The procedure will remove any formatting changes that may have been applied to the text (e.g. color changes, font size, font style, etc.). Formatting can be reapplied after the steps below are complete. 1. Copy the text that is desired in the textbox (if the textbox is in HTML source view, turn it off by clicking on the < > button). 2. Open a plain text editor (e.g. Notepad, TextEdit) and then paste the text. 3. Copy the text from the plain text editor. 4. Go back to the Blackboard textbox in which the text originally appeared and is to be re-pasted. 5. Switch the textbox to HTML view by clicking on the < > button. C o p y / P a s t e B e s t P r a c t i c e s - P a g e 3

4 6. With HTML mode active, click inside of the textbox to active the cursor. 7. Right click (Control + click on a Mac) inside of the text box and click select all. 8. Hit the Delete key on the keyboard to remove the existing code. 9. Turn off the HTML mode by clicking on the < > button. 10. Copy the text from the plain text editor (if not already copied), then, paste the text into the textbox. C o p y / P a s t e B e s t P r a c t i c e s - P a g e 4

5 11. If text formatting is desired, use the textbox formatting options as desired. 12. Click Submit when finished. Best Practices DO NOT copy/paste text directly from a Microsoft Word document. Rather, use the Paste from Word tool in Blackboard, or copy the text and paste it first into a plain text editor (e.g. Notepad [on a PC], TextEdit [on a Mac]) and then copy/paste it from there into Blackboard. While this is an extra step, it will help to avoid any issues with extraneous formatting code. Please note, using the latter option will mean that any specialized formatting (e.g. font color, font size, font style, etc.) will be lost by the intermediary step into a plain text editor. To retain source formatting, using the Paste from Word tool. More information about this can be found in the Pasting Text from Microsoft Word tutorial. If copying text from a webpage, or even from within Blackboard itself, paste the text first into a plain text editor (e.g. Notepad [on a PC], TextEdit [on a Mac]) and then copy/paste it from there into Blackboard. Please note, any specialized formatting (e.g. font color, font size, font style, etc.) will be lost by the intermediary step into a plain text editor. Text can be re-formatted using the options in the Blackboard textbox editor. If specialized formatting is desired, compose the text directly in Blackboard, using the appropriate formatting options in the textbox as desired. If composing an exam in Microsoft Word is needed and/or desirable, use Respondus to import questions into Blackboard, formatting the questions in compliance with Respondus formatting requirements. More information about Respondus is available from the FaCIT website: The following shortcut keys may be used in place of menu commands to Copy and Paste text. For a PC: Control + C to Copy and Control + V to Paste. For a MAC: Cmd + C to Copy and Cmd + V to Paste C o p y / P a s t e B e s t P r a c t i c e s - P a g e 5