Looking for a way to clean up the bloated Microsoft code what copying/pasting content from Word or Excel into a knowledge article

[jaspiranti]

We continue to struggle with the formatting when creating knowledge articles.  Whether using the import feature or copy/paste from Word, it's a real pain to work with.  Conflicts between any code ServiceNow is using and whatever Microsoft is bringing often creates such a mess that it's easier simply to rewrite the article from scratch.

I personally use Notepad++ for all my tweaking and cleanup efforts, then I copy/paste into SN with a pretty good degree of success.  This is not an option for our content owners/writers and I'm not comfortable with using some random online "text cleaner" (of which none of those are great either).

Would welcome ANY ideas, thoughts, or paths you may have taken to solve for this.

[Leesa M]

After copying to my clipboard from Word or Excel, I use Ctrl + Shift + V to paste as plain text. We also have the "Paste as text" icon turned on for our text editor, and that works great as well. Still have to manually apply the formatting for lists, etc.

[Lauren Methena]

Hi! Notepad is definitely still the standard. However, we've noticed that if you copy/paste copy from a PLAIN Word doc (i.e., absolutely no styles, single space, nothing preformatted), it copies over very plainly. 

The only thing that still doesn't work well is bullets. Those you'll have to work with. Delete the bullets. (They come over as images.) Make each line its own separate line with a space in between:

Like

This 

For

Bullets

Then, when you apply the bullet formatting, the bullets will look right.

So, strip down your Word doc like it's 1999 and copy and paste to your heart's content. Importing still adds a lot of formatting. But at least this way, you can copy and paste and not have to reformat too much.

I've even noticed that it keeps bold, underline, and italics pretty well. (Tables are a whole other thing. Reply if you want info about tables/charts - they work GREAT if you format in Word first, but I need to find the instructions and just attach them for you.)

You'll still have to do some formatting in ServiceNow but not nearly as much.

OPTION B: Copy from a document and then do a right click > paste as plain text. You'll have to go through and add all the formatting - but that may not be that much, depending on what you're doing (i.e., lots of bold? lots of italics? numbers? etc.). If it's a plain article, that will speed up the process, too.

Attaching my template doc that I use for people to submit content for you to review.

Please mark helpful or correct if this helps. Cheers! 

[Kim27 · Accepted solution]

Hi, you may need to ask your admin team to add the "clear formatting" icon to your editing tool bar. It looks like this: 

You will still need to go in and renumber the steps, but at least it gives you a clean start. I will often turn off the numbering in the Word version before I move it into SN.

I copy and pasted a sample of text from Word. 

Highlight everything, click on the "clear formatting" icon and it clears the formatting. I pulled the code before and after:

Before:

After

I hope this helps!

[Lauren Methena]

That's pretty amazing! Thanks for sharing!