Google docs text pasted in Pages with format mutilated; easiest way to fix?

Google docs text pasted in Pages presents with format mutilated; easiest way to fix?


portions of text copied from outlook to Google docs to Pages is reformatted as a long vertical string at the left margin, each line with only 1 or 2 characters. What is the easiest way to get this text back to the original desired format? I have viewed invisibles, but there are no invisibles calling for this undesired format.

iMac 24″, macOS 14.4

Posted on Apr 4, 2024 6:15 AM

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Posted on Apr 4, 2024 11:28 AM

Pages is written to read only certain types of data from the clipboard. You are copying Google Docs content to the clipboard,some of which was sourced from MS Outlook, and that content may not be in a format that Pages can decypher. If the Pages Paste, or Paste and Match Style does not result in success, then you are done with that approach of transferring Google Docs content through the clipboard into Pages. It bears mentioning that Apple's Pages is not an MS Word clone and you would likely have better results with Microsoft Word.


Pages was written to attempt translation of compatible Microsoft Word documents and Google Docs is not MS Word. You may need to download the Google Docs content as a Word .docx and then open that in a separate Pages window where if possible, it will be translated into Pages (.pages) document content. Then you can copy/paste from Pages to Pages with expected results.

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Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Apr 4, 2024 11:28 AM in response to Pearlhelp

Pages is written to read only certain types of data from the clipboard. You are copying Google Docs content to the clipboard,some of which was sourced from MS Outlook, and that content may not be in a format that Pages can decypher. If the Pages Paste, or Paste and Match Style does not result in success, then you are done with that approach of transferring Google Docs content through the clipboard into Pages. It bears mentioning that Apple's Pages is not an MS Word clone and you would likely have better results with Microsoft Word.


Pages was written to attempt translation of compatible Microsoft Word documents and Google Docs is not MS Word. You may need to download the Google Docs content as a Word .docx and then open that in a separate Pages window where if possible, it will be translated into Pages (.pages) document content. Then you can copy/paste from Pages to Pages with expected results.

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Google docs text pasted in Pages with format mutilated; easiest way to fix?

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