I am observing a strange behavior of MS Word and I would like to know why and how to work around it.
Steps to reproduce (tested on versions from 2007 through 2024):
- Start Microsoft Word, start with a blank document, insert a table containing one row and two columns.
- Populate plain text into first and second cell. Select the whole table and copy into clipboard. Paste into your favorite plain text editor (Notepad or whatever). You will get one line with two cell values separated by tab character, as expected.
- Now add any field (e.g. DATE) into the first cell before the text that already exists there. Select the whole table and copy into clipboard. Paste into your favorite plain text editor. You will get the value of the first cell in one line and then the value of the second cell on a new line, contrary to expectation to see them on the same line. For whatever reason Word inserts CR+LF characters after the cell if it contains a field even though there should be a tab character there. It does it even if the cell value does not end with the field itself, so it is not like a field inherently brings a CR+LF, it literally completes the entire cell content and then dumps CR+LF into the clipboard.
- Try saving as plain text file – same result, it inserts unnecessary CR+LF characters.
- Try saving as PDF file and then opening that PDF file in any PDF editor/viewer and copying content into clipboard – same result, the CR+LF characters are still there.
I looked at the underlying XML inside the .docx file for both steps 2 and 3 above. I do not see any CR+LF characters there in the diff between two versions.
So does anyone know why it is doing it and how to work around it? It really breaks the table export via clipboard, via plain text file or via PDF file.
