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

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.

6 Likes

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.

2 Likes

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)

3 Likes

I have the same problem

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)

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

1 Like

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.

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

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.

Did you finde the solution?

Hey All, thanks for the feedback!

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

1 Like

I am trying to copy the text formatting from google docs to Figma. it does not take over styling at all, is there a solution for this already?

1 Like