<p>Has anyone who experienced essay formatting issues figured out a workaround?</p>
<p>Paragraph spacing does not carry over when the essay is pasted into the text box. When viewed in the pdf final version after selecting "Preview and Submission," the entire essay is one huge paragraph. I tried the Common App suggestion of copying the text from Windows Notepad, and that made no difference. I would try to address this issue with the Common App folks, but I can't get the "Help Center" function to work. Very frustrating...</p>
<p>When DD copied and pasted her essay from Notepad into the text box in the CA, the paragraph spacing disappeared but she went into the text box and placed one hard return after each paragraph and although the spacing did not show up when she exited the text box, it did show up when she did a print preview just prior to submission.</p>
<p>I assume you have tried the hard spacing directly in the text box?</p>
<p>Truthfully, it seems so hit or miss as to what formatting options work…it is really frustrating.</p>
<p>I copied it to notepad, then pasted. I’ve put hard paragraph breaks in the common app itself but each time I reopen it, my three paragraphs is still one large paragraph. Any ideas?</p>
<p>I think I figured out what we were doing wrong, but I can’t be sure yet because the Common App won’t generate a PDF for review. It’s giving us the spinning wheel of death with the words “PDF generation in progress. Please be patient.” It’s been more than 30 minutes. Maybe trying again tomorrow morning when the west coast is still asleep and east coast kids are in school will work better.</p>
<p>I really think the IT issues and the formatting problems are pretty deplorable. I have a question for Common App officials (if you lurk on these forums) —do you not care about quality control or usability testing? Is it because you have a monopoly—so a quality product and user experience aren’t really that important?</p>
<p>So here’s what I think worked for us. The essay, with proper paragraph spacing, was pasted into the text box while in edit mode. The paragraph spaces did not transfer, so they were put back in while in edit mode. The “continue” button was selected and the Common App moved to the next section. We then navigated back to the essay, and the paragraph spaces were not there, BUT for some reason we could add them back without going into edit mode again. We hit “continue” again, and then selected the Common App Preview and Submission feature to generate a pdf of the application, and voila, the paragraph spaces were there in the pdf preview when before it had been one huge paragraph.</p>
<p>I <em>think</em> that’s how it worked, but we can’t go back to see for sure because the application has been submitted and the essay is now locked.</p>
<p>It works to just copy from MS Word and paste. It’ll look wrong, but don’t change it. Print preview, and it’ll look fine.</p>
<p>That didn’t work for us; copying and pasting from a Word document without any edits in the Common App text box resulted in one huge paragraph in the pdf (print preview).</p>
<p>Since I can’t see the new common app online, I am curious to know if you can still upload a doc to the common app instead of copying and pasting from one program directly to the application? Over the course of three of my own kids applying, we learned to save word doc as .pdf (which locks in all spacing and formatting) and then upload the .pdf. So my question is… can you still upload your essay or can you only copy and paste?</p>
<p>Other than a few schools that allow some supplemental material to be uploaded, there is no more uploading allowed. Students still do their essays separately in Word or whatever in anticipation of copying and pasting into their applications. </p>
<p>If your curiosity gets the best of you, it’s fine to create a common app applicant account as a parent or interested person just to see how things are laid out and what’s required.</p>
<p>We are having no luck with the “no paragraph breaks” work-around that we see everywhere on the internet. We format the essay single spaced with no indents, and two returns between paragraphs, in Word. Then we transfer it into text edit with no changes at all. Then we copy/paste it into the app. The breaks do not appear in the essay box, but I understood they were supposed to appear on the PDF preview screen. They do not. We still have one long block of text. Any suggestions?</p>
<p>Try copying paragraph breaks from various other random documents (not associated with your essay) and pasting them in the common app until you come across one that looks good. Then copy that good paragraph break and a few of the characters around it into your essay in all the right places. Then carefully delete just the extra characters but not the spaces/paragraph break.</p>
<p>If you get stuck on the preview page, and all it does is clock, check your browser settings. For Mozilla Firefox, go into Tools->Options and click on Applications tab. Under Content Type, look for Portable Document File (PDF). Next to it, under Action, it will probably say “Use Adobe Reader (default)” and it will have a drop down arrow. Open the drop down box and select “Preview in Firefox” and click OK.</p>
<p>Make sure you do this in the tab you are using for the common app. Now you can submit the app and it should give you a preview pane. It may still take a few seconds, but not much more. You have an option in the upper right hand corner to save or open the app, which will make it easier to proofread. </p>
<p>Not sure about other browsers, so check the Knowledgebase.</p>
<p>Here is how we made the paragraph formatting work:</p>
<p>Wrote it in MS Word, cut and paste into Common App. Preview showed no paragraph spacing. Went back to writing section and edited in paragraph breaks, but they did not work.</p>
<p>Go back to edit mode in common app and copy your essay. Paste it into a new word document and edit in the paragraph breaks. Delete what you have in the common app, then copy and paste the edited version from Word back into the common app.</p>
<p>You may notice that the sentence formatting is off in some places and the word count is lower. You will need to go line by line to correct. If you see a short line, place the cursor at the end of the line. If the last character is a space, you are ok, if not, hit delete and the next sentence will be joined to it - hit the space bar and it is fixed.</p>
<p>This is not as bad as it sounds. Once you are finished, save it and go to the preview - paragraph breaks should now be there.</p>
<p>Seriously — The Common App folks have managed to complicate issues on an EASY form. These workarounds are ridiculous. How about an apology common app folks? Maybe a little housecleaning is in order.</p>
<p>Hey Everyone -
I found these directions(written below) on the internet and it worked perfectly! My son just submitted his application. Follow these directions exactly as instructed. My son single spaced his essay (1.0 spacing) and then double spaced twice between paragraphs. It looked weird on the application but when it was previewed, the essay was formatted correctly.
Good luck!</p>
<p>How to format your essay on the (currently broken) Common App (CA4):</p>
<ol>
<li><p>Format the essay in Word with no indents, single spaced, and two hard returns between paragraphs). </p></li>
<li><p>Copy and paste the essay into a brand new Word document.</p></li>
<li><p>Copy and paste that into the essay box in the CA.</p></li>
<li><p>Do not touch it – do not make any corrections where a sentence ends with one word on a new line and then the new sentence continued on the next line. Leave it just as it is.</p></li>
<li><p>Then print preview and the essay should look perfect.</p></li>
</ol>