[intro] When you have completed this Guide, you’ll have learned how to copy text from an existing website or Word document onto your EKM online shop correctly.[/intro]

When you’re building your EKM online shop, it’s very easy to be tempted to copy text from elsewhere to populate your pages. After all, if you have the text saved on your other website or in a Word document surely you can just copy it over, right? Well, you could - but in the long run, copying text directly from one document or webpage straight onto your EKM online shop or to any online platform can cause lots of issues, which you’ll inevitably have to deal with at a later date.

When text is copied from a webpage or a Word document, the text will include some code that is not visible on the displayed page, which is used to format the text. If the text has a lot of formatting such as bold, italic or underlined words, specific fonts, indenting and so on, this will automatically be carried over when the text is copied from one place to another.

This can cause two major issues; the first is that the formatting of the text - such as the font, indenting, font size and so on might not match the design and content of wherever it’s being pasted, which can make an online shop, Webpage or website look terrible. The second reason is that when you come to edit this pasted text, any changes that you make to it may not be applied, as the formatting - the hidden code which isn’t immediately obvious - will prevent any changes from being implemented. You’ll be able to delete and add words, but this may not display on the page how you would like.

Therefore, to remove the formatting from the text, you need to copy it elsewhere first. If you are on a PC, you need to run a search for Notepad. This is an application on every PC which allows you to copy text and code without any formatting being assigned to it. If you are using a Mac, the Apple equivalent is called TextEditor.

[tips] If you want to read the text in Notepad, click ‘Format’ on the top left-hand side and then click ‘Word Wrap’ in the drop-down menu. This will ‘squeeze’ all of your text into the window so you have to scroll down to read and not scroll to the right. Remember to turn Word Wrap off afterwards by navigating to it and clicking it against to remove the tick, before you copy the text and paste it onto your EKM online shop.[/tips]

1. Open Notepad, and paste the text you would like to add to your EKM online shop within it. You then need to ‘Edit’ on the top left-hand side and choose ‘Select All’ from the drop-down menu. This will select all of the text within Notepad. You then need to click Edit again, but this time select ‘Cut’ from the drop-down menu:

2. You can then navigate yourself to the relevant area or Webpage on your EKM online shop to paste the text, using either the ‘Paste’ button or by pressing the CTRL and V keys on your keyboard.

3. When you have pasted the text onto your Webpage, you can then format it in the usual ways, so that the finished version will look more like this:

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[contact] If you need our help with your EKM online shop, contact your Ecommerce Expert or the Customer Support Team, who will be able to point you in the right direction. We're open from 8am-6pm weekdays and 9am-5.30pm weekends. If you'd like to suggest a feature or an upgrade on any of the EKM platforms, please let us know on the EKM Suggestions Board. If you have a non-account-specific question to ask the EKM Team, join us in the EKM Community. [/contact]