Making the Paste Options Button Option Persistent

Written by Allen Wyatt (last updated November 22, 2024)
This tip applies to Word 2007, 2010, 2013, 2016, 2019, and 2021

Lee notes that in Options > Advanced, in the "Copy, cut, and paste" section, he would like the option "Show Paste Options button when content is pasted" to be permanently checked, and he thinks it used to be. However, as of late, the checkmark doesn't "stick" for Lee past the current session. When he next opens Word, he must go to Options and recheck it. He wonders if there is any way to make this option persistent.

In doing some testing, this is one setting that seems a bit strange. We can get it to stick on some versions of Word, but not on others. We can get it to stick for some documents, but not for others. The bottom line is that there is no rhyme or reason (that we can discern) as to why it sometimes sticks and other times doesn't.

Perhaps (and I don't know this for fact) this is one setting that was somehow messed up in the latest versions of Word and Microsoft simply hasn't discovered it yet. If you open a single document, set the setting, save the document, and exit Word, you would hope that it would still be set when you next start the program. If that doesn't work for you, then you can always take a macro-based approach. Adding the following to your Normal template is a simple way to fix the problem:

Sub AutoExec()
    Options.DisplayPasteOptions = True
End Sub

Sub AutoOpen()
    Options.DisplayPasteOptions = True
End Sub

With these in place, the setting is forced to True every time you start Word or open a document.

Note:

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WordTips is your source for cost-effective Microsoft Word training. (Microsoft Word is the most popular word processing software in the world.) This tip (13824) applies to Microsoft Word 2007, 2010, 2013, 2016, 2019, and 2021.

Author Bio

Allen Wyatt

With more than 50 non-fiction books and numerous magazine articles to his credit, Allen Wyatt is an internationally recognized author. He is president of Sharon Parq Associates, a computer and publishing services company. Learn more about Allen...

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What is 9 + 7?

2021-02-25 11:56:32

Kim Oger

Thank you for this discussion. I've had a similar problem: I changed the ctrl+V shortcut to paste without formatting. That worked for a while, but then one day it didn't any more! It went back to the default. No idea why.

2021-02-22 03:26:26

Richard Curtis

Dear Marjan,
When re-opening a document, a message box sometimes appears near the right margin about halfway down the screen. Clicking in this box takes you to the point in the document when it was last saved. If you miss the box, try the keyboard shortcut Shift+F5.

2021-02-21 16:21:33

Lucy Look

Thank you for posting this! This option started to default to un-checked with each new opening of Word. It did it on different computers and when I upgraded to Office 365, even. I even called Microsoft support (for Office 365) about it a couple of years ago, and they were perplexed. Their only solution was to uninstall Office and do a fresh install, which did not fix the problem.

2021-02-20 05:05:21

Marjan Pungartnik

Dear Allen,

there is a lovely feature in WordPerfect that reopening a larger document it leads you to the place where you edited the document before closing it. I miss that in Word - or I simply have not discovered it yet in a little messy Word.
Thank you for your tips!
Marjan Pungartnik

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