Remove unintentional formatting

This article describes how to remove unintentional formatting from your content you copy and paste from documents or the web, into a Blackboard content item.

When you are creating a Blackboard Test Question, Announcement or Content Item, if you copy and paste text from Microsoft Word or a website, you will inadvertently bring in a lot of formatting information, as well as the text itself.

At the very least, this can look ugly, with a mix of fonts and font sizes. In the worst cases, the text will display to students in such a way that answering the question or viewing the text becomes difficult. These oddities are not always immediately apparent when creating the content, so it is always worth previewing the test before making it available to students. However these formatting idiosyncrasies may only become visible with a specific combination of device, operating system, browser and screen resolution.

The best way to avoid such problems altogether is to

  • write content, or questions and answers directly in Blackboard
  • or copy your text from Word into Notebook, and then into Blackboard, thus stripping out everything but the plain text.

Removing formatting from an existing test question or content item

Locate the item you wish to edit.

If you are editing a test, and students have already submitted to the test, Blackboard will issue warnings about editing the test. However you can ignore these warnings if you are making only cosmetic changes.

You have two options to remove the unintentional formatting. you can either use the Remove Formatting tool, or the HTML code view.

Using the Remove Formatting tool
  • Locate the content item which needs to be edited.
  • Select all the text and select the Remove Formatting icon.
  • Select the the Remove Formatting (eraser icon). This icon maynot not visible by default. You have to switch to full screen view before the icon is visible. You can then use the Remove Formatting tool (eraser icon).
  • All formatting will be removed. All bullets, numbered lists, indentations, line spacing, centered text, and font formatting and sizing will be removed.
  • Click on the Full Screen icon again to return to the normal view.
Using the HTML code view
  • Select the answer text and then press Ctrl+C to copy the text.
  • Click on the HTML icon.
  • A new small window opens, showing the HTML code. Select all of the code in this window.
  • Press Ctrl+V to paste the answer text.
  • Press Update to close this window and return to the main editing screen.
  • Repeat the procedure for all answers, then press Submit.

See more on working with text on Blackboard help