What if I want to save time by Cutting and Pasting my FrameMaker

Adobe FrameMaker Frequently asked questions

What if I want to save time by Cutting and Pasting my FrameMaker?

Sometimes it is helpful to Copy or Cut a Variable to the clipboard for Pasting. Pasting may be done as you type for easy Variable insertion. Pasting may also be done through the Find/Change window. An example of when you might use the Find/Change would be if you decided to replace a frequently-occurring phrase in a document with a Variable and wanted to quickly change all occurrences.
To place FrameMaker Variables on the clipboard (so they may then be Pasted), you must first select the Variable. To do this, click once so that the Variable highlights but the Variable dialog box does not open. Either Cut (CTR-V) or Copy (CTRL-C) and the Variable will be on the clipboard, ready to Paste.
When you Paste, the Variable should drop into your document at your insertion point. If you are Pasting into paragraphs that use the same default font as the paragraph you Copied from, you will have no problems.
If, however, you Paste a Variable into paragraphs with different text sizes or fonts, your Variable will not always match the text around it. The fix for this is to redefine your Variable so that it will automatically match text it is Pasted into. (This will be much easier than reformatting by hand!) Redefine your Variable so that its definition begins with the building block:

Even if you are using a Character Tag in your definition, this will work. Just make sure your other tag appears after the building block above.
Note: If you are about to design a template, it is a good practice to define all the Variables to start with to avoid the problem discussed above.


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