<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<page xmlns="http://projectmallard.org/1.0/" type="topic" style="task" id="textselection" lang="en-CA">

  <info>
    <link type="guide" xref="index#faq"/>
    <desc>When you copy text, the text that is pasted might be different from what you had selected.</desc>
    <revision pkgversion="1.25" version="0.1" date="2021-03-13" status="final"/>
    <credit type="author">
      <name>Phil Bull</name>
      <email>philbull@gmail.com</email>
    </credit>
    <license>
      <p>Creative Commons Share Alike 3.0</p>
    </license>

  </info>

<title>Why didn't the text I selected copy properly?</title>


<p>
If you highlight and copy text from a document using Atril and then paste it into another
application, the formatting may alter.  It may also contain different characters than the original selection. This often happens when copying text from a PDF document with multiple columns.
</p>


 <p>
  This problem happens because of how some document formats handle text.
  The actual text in the document is stored differently from the way it is
  displayed. This may result in a copy that does not appear as expected.
 </p>

 <p>
  Unfortunately, there is no real way of fixing this problem. Copying
  less text at a time, or copying the text into a text editor (like <app>pluma</app>) may minimize the problem.
  </p>

</page>
