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SLT-UX
Active Member
April 2, 2021

Preserving style/formatting when Copy/pasting text layers between files

  • April 2, 2021
  • 16 replies
  • 9364 views

It would be a big time saver to preserve the style and formatting of a text layer, when copying and pasting it from one file to another file. Right now the paste operation loses all formatting and I have to re-format the text all over again.

16 replies

Thos
New Participant
June 29, 2021

I agree, the loss of formatting is a frustrating behaviour. My use case is copy/pasting text from an Email, Word or Excel file to create notes and annotations in my file (think bullet lists of requirements). This is different from pasting directly into a UI design where it is more logical to remove formatting.

I propose having a run-time option to paste as plain text or retain formatting.

Clark
February 9, 2022

I am trying to paste text with bullet points from one text box to another text box, BOTH in Figma, and it won’t transfer the bullet points over. Freaking insane.

I feel like I bought a car that was sold to me based on it’s amazing features and then discovering that the windows don’t roll down or some other basic feature you would expect every car to have.

If I’m missing something here please show me (and tell me I’m an idiot, I’m ok with that)

Charbo
November 29, 2022

I have the same problem

Harun_Alikadic1
New Participant
February 7, 2023

Is there a plugin that solves this problem? I couldn’t find one. Expected results:

  • Copy text from external app (HTML in browser, Word, GDocs, RTF text editor, Illustrator, Email)
  • Paste in Figma (Cmd/Ctrl + V)
  • Text is pasted in Figma maintaining text as text object (not image, editable text) with pasted basic formatting (color, bold, italic, link, list, size, line break, paragraph)
robin_figma
New Participant
March 13, 2023

Trying to paste rich text from another program into Figma and it strips all rich text. SO FRUSTRATING!! –– After struggling to copy a long document with rich text I found this workaround, however, Sketch is required.

• from text editor copy into rich text notepad
• from rich text notepad paste into sketch with nothing selected (might have to say paste as rich text)
• from sketch select pasted item (don’t use text tool)
• copy as SVG code (edit → copy as SVG code)
• paste into figma with nothing selected

Andre29
August 22, 2023

Same problem. I’m trying to paste lyrics from a song, so the line breaks are really important. However Figma removes all line breaks and shoves the whole lyrics into one single line. What a useless behaviour. Btw someone posted “control+cmd+V” but that doesn’t work at all.

Hunter_Wilhelm
December 10, 2023

Same problem, I want to use Figma more instead of Google Slides, but pasting stuff from the web always unformats the text.

Matt_W
New Member
December 13, 2023

It even strips whitespace. I guess it’s easier for them to work with, programmatically, but sucks for users.

Figma makes a design tool so that it can better build the Figma app and so every creative decision has been restrained, to create an app that organises layers.

March 3, 2024

Did you finde the solution?

djv
Figmate
Community Support
March 4, 2024

Hey All, thanks for the feedback!

We’ll pass this onto our team for future consideration.