Copying and Pasting Into Blackboard Discussion Boards and Retaining Formatting

Here is an unusual post.  It is technical in nature, and not the type of thing I normally do.  That said, I hope it might be helpful to those who use Blackboard at Liberty University and Liberty University Online.

It is often a struggle to copy and paste materials into Blackboard while retaining the formatting of the material as it appeared in the word processor.  Students (and professors) are often frustrated when material that looks great in the word processor is pasted into Blackboard and suddenly looks horrible.  The following methods are not meant to be full-proof ways to solve this problem for all users.  Rather, they are suggestions that I, and some students of mine over the years, have found helpful.  (A full-proof, technical discussion of this issue is beyond my capabilities.)

Method for Copying and Pasting Into Blackboard Discussion Boards Using a Windows PC

First, I have a Lenovo issued to me by Liberty University.  I am using Internet Explorer 8 and Microsoft Word 2007.  Blackboard and Liberty University recommend using FireFox to access and work in Blackboard.  Generally, I agree and use either FireFox or Chrome for all other purposes except for copying and pasting into discussion boards.  For copying and pasting into discussion boards, I have found that Internet Explorer works better.[1]

Now, with that out of the way, I will turn to the method.  It is as follows:

1. Draft the discussion board post in Microsoft Word.  Format it exactly as you want it to appear.
2. Click on Edit and Select All.
3. Right click in the selected text, and then click Copy.
4. Navigate into the discussion board area in Blackboard using Internet Explorer.  Click in the box where you would type your discussion board entry if you were doing it in Blackboard and not copying and pasting it in.
5. Right click in the box, and then click Paste.  (This appears to be a very important step.  If you use the Paste button provided in Blackboard, your post will look horrible.)
6. You may note that some of the formatting has been lost.  This will often relate to indention of the first line of a paragraph, line spacing, spacing between paragraphs, etc.  However, the distortion is usually much, much smaller using this method, and it can usually be corrected rather quickly.

Method for Copying and Pasting Into Blackboard Discussion Boards Using a Mac

First, I am using a 2011 MacBook Pro 13″.  (Yes, I am now officially a Mac person.  I resisted it for years, but they really are superior machines.)  I am using FireFox 3.6 and Microsoft Word for Mac 2011.  I sometimes also use Chrome and Safari to access Blackboard on my Mac, but I have found that Firefox is almost flawless for the purpose of cutting/copying and pasting on the Mac.

Now, with that out of the way, I will turn to the method.  It is as follows:

1. Draft the discussion board post in Microsoft Word.  Format it exactly as you want it to appear.
2. Click CMD+A to select all of the text.
3. Click CMD+C to copy the text.
4. Navigate into the discussion board area in Blackboard in FireFox.  Click in the box where you would type your discussion board entry if you were doing it in Blackboard and not copying and pasting it in.
5. Click CMD+V to paste the text into the box.  (This appears to be a very important step.  If you use the Paste button provided in Blackboard, your post will look horrible.)
6. You may note that some of the formatting has been lost as discussed in the Windows PC example above.  However, I have found that this method works even better than the method described for the PC.  (Which is, in my opinion, just further evidence of the superiority of Macs!  Ha Ha!)

Conclusion

As I have said, I am sure that these methods will not work for everyone on all computers.  But, as I noted earlier, I, and several of my students, have found them to be very effective.  In my experience it will even retain rather complicated formatting like footnotes (necessary for Bluebook and Turabian.)  I hope this helps.  If you have other ideas, or have found other methods that have helped you, please feel free to post them in the comments below.  It may be a way to help others, and I am certainly open to learning new ways to more effectively and efficiently use Blackboard.

PS — I have also found this method the most effective for blog posts as well.