• Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Skip to footer

Lepre's Learning Log

Beginning Teacher Coaching | Strategies for New Teachers

  • Home
    • Privacy Policy
  • About
  • Blog
  • Podcast
  • FB Group
  • Contact me!

Let’s be social!

  • facebook
  • instagram
  • twitter
  • pinterest
  • mail

How to getting rid of that pesky Microsoft Word formatting

January 19, 2016 by Kim Lepre Leave a Comment

Share8
Tweet
Pin
Share
8 Shares

I have blogged several times about one of my new tech best friends, Google Docs. Ever since I discovered it and forced myself to use it, I find that I prefer it over Microsoft Word. Don’t get me wrong; I still love Word. I’ve been using it forever, and before that WordPerfect (did I just age myself?). However, I find that I am lured to the simplicity and collaborative features of Google Docs, so it stands to be my word processor of choice.

When I migrated my documents over to Google Drive, many of them were in Word format: sub plans, worksheets, recipes, etc. Initially I thought, No problem, they’re both word processors so I can just use Google Docs to open Word docs, right? Well…yes and no. Technically, I can right-click on a document with the .doc extension, select “Open With Google Docs,” and it will open it as instructed. But this new Google Doc doesn’t look quite right.

Take a look at this example of a document originally created in Word:

Screen Shot 2016-01-18 at 10.18.50 PM

When I choose to open it in Google Docs, that same document looks like this:

Screen Shot 2016-01-18 at 10.19.38 PMNotice how the lines and font are off. Also, you can’t tell from this picture, but the newGoogle Doc is two pages instead of one.

This is caused by the automatic formatting in Word. In a nutshell, it sets certain parameters like your margins, spacing, justification, etc. It’s one of those features that people love to hate about Word. Normally this isn’t an issue until you’re trying to open a Word document in a different word processor. Word wants to bring its formatting with it, but if you don’t have the exact same settings in the new word processor, it doesn’t translate perfectly. The result is that all of the text appears, however the font may be different, as well as spacing, dashes, lines, boxes, etc.

I found the solution to this by accident, and it’s beautifully simple.

  1. In your wonky-looking Google Doc, select all of the text (on a PC, you can click Control A, and on a Mac, Command A)
  2. Go to Format at the top, and then click on “Clear Formatting.”
https://kimberlyl.edublogs.org/files/2016/01/Clear-formatting-1ltnnho.mp4

And voila, you’re done!

Now, take a look at the original Word doc vs the new Google doc:

Screen Shot 2016-01-18 at 10.18.50 PM  Screen Shot 2016-01-18 at 10.30.54 PM

Not perfect, but much better than before!

You might also like these

Share8
Tweet
Pin
Share
8 Shares

Filed Under: Educational Technology, Teaching Tagged With: formatting, Google Docs

Reader Interactions

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Primary Sidebar

Hi, I'm Kim! I help new and beginning teachers navigate through their crazy first few years of teaching so that they can THRIVE instead of survive.
Facebook
Facebook
fb-share-icon
Twitter
Visit Us
Follow Me
Tweet
Instagram
Pinterest
Pinterest
Pin Share

Learn more about

  • Assessment and Grading
  • Beyond Teaching
  • Curriculum
  • Digging into Data Series
  • Educational Technology
  • Podcast
  • Student Blogging Series
  • Teaching
  • Teaching Strategies

What are you looking for?

My most popular posts

Footer

Categories

Let’s be social!

Facebook
Facebook
fb-share-icon
Twitter
Visit Us
Follow Me
Tweet
Instagram
Pinterest
Pinterest
Pin Share
Contact Me!
  • Privacy Policy

Copyright © 2018 Lepre's Learning Log - All Rights Reserved | Sitemap

Beginning Teacher Coaching | Strategies for New Teachers

 

Loading Comments...