Have you ever pasted content from Microsoft Word into Moodle LMS, only to find strange formatting issues? Extra spaces, weird fonts, or text that just doesn’t look right? That’s because MS Word adds hidden formatting that can cause display problems, make content harder to read and cause digital accessibility issues (e.g. WCAG, Section 508, etc.)
Try one of these simple methods to keep your content clean, looking good and accessible:
- Use an Online Cleaner
- Go to HTML Cleaner, an online cleaning tool.
- Copy and paste your MS Word content into the left box. Most of the time, the text will be cleaned automatically.
- Finally, copy all the text from the left editor and paste it into your Moodle LMS' editor.
- Tip: If you use the "Clean" button, some of these types of online HTML cleaners may append an ad or link to the end of your content. Simply check for this and remove.
- Use Moodle’s "Paste as Text" Feature
- Before pasting, turn on "Paste as text" mode in the Moodle LMS editor.
- Paste your content. Since this removes all formatting, you may need to add bold, italics, and links again.
- Use an interim text editor
- Paste your content into a text editor such as notepad or VS Code. This will strip out all formatting and codes leaving just the text.
- Paste your content. Since this removes all formatting, you may need to add bold, italics, and links again.
Note: Images need to be inserted separately, as they do not transfer correctly when copying and pasting together with text. However, you can copy an image to your clipboard and paste it directly into Moodle's editor.
What difference does this make?
This is what the source code looks like when pasted directly from MS Word into Moodle LMS:
This is what the source code looks like after cleaning all of the extra MS Word codes:
These simple steps will help you avoid formatting problems and keep your Moodle content clean, consistently formatted, accessible and professional.
Hope you find this information helpful.
Michael Milette
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