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Cut and Paste from Word always goes to an internal note
Answered
Posted Mar 23, 2021
Hi folks,
I create a ticket in the Zendesk (browser). In Outlook, I paste fully formatted text cut from a Word document. This reply to the ticket is always marked as an internal note. I do not use #note.
I end up having to recreate the formatting in the web client, which is never as good as the original. Is there a solution to this problem?
Thanks,
Steve
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8 comments
Andrew J
Just to clarify, you are replying to a helpdesk ticket, using Outlook email, and formatted text pasted from Word?
Is this reply expecting to be public, because it is a reply to an end user?
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Steve Mayer
Hi Andrew,
This reply is expected to be public because it is to an end user.
Thanks much,
Steve
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Andrew J
Ok thanks. This might not sound the most diplomatic, but firstly Zendesk is a online support system, and that is where it is most reliable and predictable.
Formatted emails read by Zendesk will be rendered as best they can, but it's a forgone conclusion that a fully formatted outlook email by the time it was come in and gone out from Zendesk is not going to look exactly as you wrote it in Outlook. Word and Outlook are fairly similar, but pasting between them can create some unusual code and formatting structure behind the glossy front, or last time I looked anyway.
I imagine you are using a Word document for formatted canned answers or instructions. You may be best to recreate these instructions in Zendesk, and convert them to a macro so they can be applied in Zendesk or via their app.
However, I've never seen an email become internal for this reason. Make sure the email you are responding from is in your agent profile.
Email is a great backup for when you're on the run, but Zendesk is not really intended to be email based from the agent side for more than incidental stuff. Keep it simple or you are at the mercy of the complexities and changes of Outlook and Zendesks best attempt to interpret it.
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Steve Mayer
Hi Andrew,
No worries.
I'd already figured macros were the way to go for content that needs frequent use. For low volume use, that's just a pain.
I understand the intent is to be web-focused, still, this is the sort of quirk that can (has) ruined mornings.
Thanks for your help!
Regards,
Steve
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Andrew J
No problem Steve.
I use email all the time for responses, but mostly from my phone, so little temptation to get complex.
The quality of email handling from Zendesk now, compared to when I first started using it is fantastic, but all I can reiterate is, for anything the customer is going to see, so for reliable display. It may have saved your day that this went private - if it went public the result could have been a serious mess.
Out of interest, if you paste from Word to Zendesk, how does that work out? It seems to have improved as well recently.
The basic formatting options in Zendesk, somewhat approximate what they can reliably handle.
I still see a lot of support emails from companies we deal with that are entirely unformatted text - so bold, italic, bullets, inline-images, tables, headings etc is quite nice. We don't use it as well as we should yet.
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Steve Mayer
Hi Andrew,
The result of cutting and pasting is a bit odd. Headings have special formatting but not what they had in Word. Images are not included. Bullet lists change bullets mid-list. A good deal of fixing is required, but perhaps better than starting from scratch.
Cheers
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Andrew J
Hello Steve,
That sounds like what I expect. Generally if I am typing out something not in Zendesk, I'd do it in a text doc, so that I can just add formatting when I paste it in, rather than take time formatting it and then redoing it. But mostly I just open a full Zendesk page and do formatting in there - I've learnt most of the keyboard shortcuts so it's not a bad experience now. A far cry from when we had to use *markdown* to _show_ formatting! 🤣
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Andrew J
#### h4 :-)
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