You can either:

1. Type text directly into the Blackboard text pane and use the toolbar to enhance the text visually; OR
2. Paste text created in a word processing software into the Blackboard text pane.

When you type information into the Blackboard text pane, it automatically places HTML tags in your document so it can be displayed in a web browser, e.g. Internet Explorer. When you paste a document from word processing software into the Blackboard text pane, it attempts to interpret the information and place HTML tags in the document.

Although pasting information into the Blackboard text pane is much easier than creating it within that pane, it can be problematic. The word processing software frequently used – Microsoft Word – embeds formatting tags into your document. These formatting tags allow documents to be displayed correctly in Microsoft Word. However, when a Microsoft Word document is pasted into the Blackboard text pane, these tags are retained. Since these tags are not HTML tags, your browser cannot interpret them creating problems when your web browser displays the information.

Although using other browsers such as Firefox may eliminate this problem, many people use Internet Explorer. So, we’ve come up with a simple solution to this problem. Here are the steps:

1. If you are creating your document in Microsoft Word, save it as an RTF file.
2. When you are ready to paste the document in the Blackboard text pane, open it in WordPad (for MAC OS, use a similar word processing software).
3. Select the “Select All” function in the Edit menu.
4. Select the “Copy” function.
5. Shift to the Blackboard page and place your cursor in the Blackboard text pane.
6. Paste the document into the Blackboard text pane.

You are done. The document will display paragraphs correctly and even tables with borders and colors will be retained. See Creating an RTF Document and Pasting It into the Blackboard Text Pane.

View HTML Examples

Here are examples of the HTML Code created when a document is typed into the Blackboard Text Pane, when an RTF document is pasted from WordPad and when a DOC document is pasted from Microsoft Word. You can see from these examples that displaying a Word document pasted into the Blackboard Text Pane is problematic. The HTML Code is huge and contains a number of Word tags not used in HTML Code.