I have some (formatted) text that I want to get into Scrivener in the Scrivener default formatting. I used Paste. That’s the wrong choice because it adds formatting. So, I used Paste and Match Style. This seems like the right choice and it works. But because I already pasted and deleted the text, the “matched style” is already wrong (it’s the style from the previous Paste). (Undo doesn’t seem to work in this case. I probably did something in between.) So, what I am looking for is some command like “Reset this whole text box to the default text style”. Is there something like this?
This is a very common and not only a Scrivener problem.
Workaround: Go to the last line or word of the text that has the right formatting and hit enter or space or any other character. Then paste and match style. If it still does not work try again but this time go left one character and then paste. You must be inside of the text block with the correct formatting.
Hit Delete after the pasted text.
This is how I do it.
Anyway, in Scrivener there IS the command you’re looking for: Document/Convert/Formatting to …
But be careful – if you did other changes to the default formatting they might get flattened! The workaround on the other hand just works in the particular place you want it to.
suavito has already answered your question, but just to add: on OS X, the text system has something called “typing attributes”. When you paste and then delete, the typing attributes will be set to the format of whatever you just deleted. In Scrivener, you could just click into a different document and then back again, as when a blank document is opened, Scrivener sets the typing attributes to the default ones (set in Preferences).
However, as suavito said, what you most likely want to do is use Documents > Convert > Formatting to Default Text Style. You can actually import any number of documents, select them all in the binder, and then use this option to apply the default formatting to all of them at once.
Best,
Keith
Thanks! This is a fine solution.