Clipboard content superimposed on text (SOLVED)

DVB · Power User Joined: 01 Feb 2008 Posts: 99

In one long chapter of my current book I've just discovered that a two paragraph quotation I copy-and-pasted into the text a few days ago is also superimposed on the text in another part of the document. If I delete or move the text it leaves a blank box behind, still overlaying the genuine text.

I have a very tight deadline on this book; I can't afford delays while trying to sort out a corrupted document. Does anyone here have any idea how I can resolve the problem? If I have to go back to a backup of the document from before pasting that text I will lose many pages of work done throughout the chapter since then.

Can anyone help, please?

floris_v · Posted: Tue Aug 31, 2010 4:02 am Post subject:

If that document isn't very complex with much formatting, you might consider saving it as plain text to get rid of any nasty stuff. You can also rename the file to .zip, open the content.xml file in the archive and search for the offending text; maybe some tags got corrupted. First make a backup of your file!
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DVB · Power User Joined: 01 Feb 2008 Posts: 99

Thank you; but unfortunately it's 22,000 words in 35 pages with a large number of italicised titles, indented quotations and, at this point, 96 endnotes. Saving it as plain text would lose all of these and necessitate days of recreation. As I said, I can't afford delays; I have to deliver the book two months from today, with a lot of writing still to be done.

Any other ideas, anyone?

jrkrideau · Posted: Tue Aug 31, 2010 5:36 am Post subject:

Can you check and see if you have a frame or a section there? It sounds like you may have imported something more than just the text of the quotation.

Have a look in navigator and see what's happening.
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DVB · Power User Joined: 01 Feb 2008 Posts: 99

Thanks for the suggestion; we've spoken before, haven't we -- about Zotero.

Just before I saw this, I solved the problem in the simplest way imaginable: Ctrl-A, Ctrl-C, open a new file, Ctrl-V. It copied the genuine text but not the floating extraneous text.
Relief!

But I'll keep your suggestion in mind if anything like this happens again.