Tutorial: Make use of Paste and Match Style in Pages

It’s a mistake that we will all make at some time or another. You’ll write reams of text into a particular template but halfway through you decide that you want to change the design. You can easily paste the text into a new document with a simple Copy and Paste action, but unfortunately it will retain the original formatting (text format refers to how the text is styled including font, size, weight, colour and leading). By using ‘Paste and Match Style’, the text can be pasted into a new document but will automatically format itself into the format of the template, meaning that you won’t have to waste time selecting the right font, size and weight. It’s a simple trick that will only take minutes to learn but could end up saving you hours. In this quick tutorial, we’ve also included some keyboard short cuts, so that you can avoid having to use your mouse and the long winded drop-down menu options by hitting a couple of keys on the keyboard instead.

1: Select text
Select the text that you want to copy. Click the pointer on the text, either drag or click till all the text you need is highlighted. Two clicks will highlight a whole word, three will highlight a whole paragraph.

2: Copy
Go up to the ‘Edit’ drop-down menu at the top of the interface and select ‘Copy’. A keyboard short cut for this action would be to hold down the ‘Command’ key and press ‘C’.

3: Select
As soon as the document into which you would like to paste your text is ready, simply highlight the text that you want to replace by repeating the first step again.

4: Paste and Match
Go back up to the ‘Edit’ drop-down menu and select ‘Paste and Match Style’. The text from the first document will copy over the text but in the style of the second document.