Hello,
I’d like to continue my series about simple tricks, settings, and basic steps for publishing a proper WordPress article. I started this topic last week, and my goal is to explain everything from the ground up as clearly as possible.
It’s been around seven years since I started blogging and monetizing my websites completely from scratch. Looking back, I wasted a surprising amount of time on small but frustrating issues that nobody really talks about when you’re just getting started.
That’s one of the main reasons why I created this website and started writing these articles. I want to show not only how things can be done, but also how they are generally recommended to be done.
Why I’m Sharing These Tips
When you’re new to blogging, even the simplest tasks can become unnecessarily complicated. Formatting issues, publishing mistakes, image settings, and other small details can easily eat up hours of your time.
My hope is that by sharing my own experience:
- You can avoid some of the mistakes I made.
- You can learn faster than I did.
- You can focus more on creating content and less on fixing problems.
- These guides might save you a lot of time and frustration.
What We’ll Cover
In this article, I’ll show some useful beginner-friendly tricks for moving content from a Word document or PDF doc into Google Docs before publishing it on WordPress.
We’ll look at:
- Basic formatting tips
- Common mistakes to avoid
- Simple settings worth checking
- A few small tricks that can make the publishing process much smoother
If these guides help even one person get started a little faster, then writing them was worth it.
A Common Mistake When Publishing Guest Posts
Let’s say you receive a guest post by email as a Word document. This is especially common if you regularly work with freelance writers, guest contributors, or content agencies.
The same problem often applies to articles delivered as PDF files. In fact, formatting issues can be even worse when content is copied from a PDF, as headings, links, spacing, and text structure are more likely to break during the transfer.
If you’re in a hurry and not paying close attention, it’s very tempting to simply copy and paste the entire article directly into WordPress and hit publish.
Unfortunately, that’s often where the problems begin.
What looks perfectly fine in Word or PDF doesn’t always translate well into WordPress. Links can disappear, headings can lose their formatting, paragraph spacing can break, and sometimes the entire article ends up as one large block of text.
That’s why it’s worth spending a few extra minutes preparing the content properly before publishing.
What Can Go Wrong?
In many cases, a simple copy-and-paste process can cause:
- Links to disappear
- Formatting to break
- Headings and subheadings to lose their structure
- Paragraph spacing to become inconsistent
- The entire article to appear as one large block of text
At first glance, everything may look fine. Then, after publishing, you notice that important links are missing, headings are no longer recognized as headings, and the article has become much harder to read.
The Annoying Part
The real frustration comes afterward.
You have to go back into the article and manually fix everything:
- Recreate the headings.
- Add back the missing links.
- Correct the formatting.
- Check paragraph spacing.
- Review the entire article line by line.
It’s not difficult work, but it’s repetitive and completely avoidable.
I press Ctrl + K to open the hyperlink window.
From there, I copy the target URL directly.
What About Images?
Images are another thing that usually don’t transfer properly when you simply copy and paste content from a Word document.
In most cases, the images won’t come across at all, which is actually not a huge problem. Personally, I recommend uploading images separately anyway.
There are a few reasons for this:
- You can optimize image file sizes before uploading.
- You can add proper alt text for SEO and accessibility.
- You can choose the exact placement of each image.
- You have more control over image captions and settings.
- It helps avoid formatting issues later on.
- Most importantly, you actually own and control the images stored on your website.
This last point is something many beginners don’t realize.
If you simply copy and paste content from another website or a Google Doc, the image may not be uploaded to your WordPress media library at all. Instead, your article could be displaying the image directly from the original source.
That might seem fine at first, but it creates a hidden dependency. If the original image is deleted, moved, renamed, or the source website goes offline, the image can disappear from your article as well. One day, you may find broken image icons throughout your content without understanding why.
Always upload images directly to your WordPress media library!
By uploading images directly to your own WordPress media library, you ensure that they remain available regardless of what happens to the original source.
How to Avoid these extra works?
In this guide, I’ll show you a simple workflow that helps preserve formatting, headings, and links when moving content from a Word document into Google Docs and eventually into WordPress.
A few extra minutes during the import process can save you a lot of editing time later.
Step-by-Step: From Gmail Word File to Google Docs
So first of all, you receive a Word document in your Gmail inbox. This is usually the starting point when someone sends you a guest post or content draft.
From here, the next steps are actually quite simple if you know what to click.
Step 1: Open the Word file
Click on the attached Word document in Gmail.
At the top, you’ll usually see an option called “Open with”.
Click it, and a dropdown menu will appear with several options.
Among them, choose Google Docs.
Step 2: Convert to Google Docs
Once you select Google Docs, the file will open in a new tab.
Now your Word document has been automatically converted into a Google Docs file.
This is your working version of the article.
Why this is useful
From Google Docs, you can copy the content and paste it into WordPress, and in most cases:
- Formatting stays intact
- Headings remain structured
- Links are preserved
- Overall layout is much cleaner than direct Word copy-paste
Important note about images
Images may also come through inside Google Docs, which looks convenient at first.
However, I still recommend uploading images separately into WordPress.
Why?
Because if you later delete or lose access to the Google Doc, the images can also disappear or break on your website if they were not properly uploaded.
Over time, this can create broken images on published posts without you even realizing it.
(How to download and manage images properly is a separate topic — it can get a bit long, so I’ll cover that in another guide.)
Final workflow: Gmail → Open with Google Docs → Clean copy → WordPress
This small extra step makes the whole publishing process much more stable and much less frustrating in the long run.
PDF Files Are Actually Even Easier (Slightly)
Good news — handling PDF files is actually a bit simpler than Word documents.
The process is very similar, but there’s one small difference in how you open and convert the file.
Step 1: Open the PDF from Gmail
When you receive a PDF attachment in Gmail, click on it as usual.
Step 2: Use the Google Docs icon
On the preview screen, you’ll see a Google Docs icon.
Click on it.
After that, the icon will change and a folder icon will appear instead.
Step 3: Choose where to save it
Click the folder icon.
Now Google will ask you where you want to store the new document inside your Google Drive.
You can:
- Choose an existing folder
- Or create a new one
Select your preferred location.
Step 4: Open the Google Docs version
Once saved, click on the document.
It will open in a new tab as a proper Google Docs file.
Now you have a clean, editable version of the original PDF.
Why this is useful
From this point, the workflow is the same as with Word files:
- You can copy the content safely
- Formatting is mostly preserved
- Links usually stay intact
- You get a much cleaner structure than direct PDF copy-paste
So your final workflow stays simple: Gmail → PDF → Google Drive save → Open in Google Docs → WordPress
Important Note About Images: Just like with Word documents, always download images and upload them directly to your WordPress media library.
Final Thoughts
Let’s try to get used to simple solutions from the very beginning, otherwise even the easiest tasks can become unnecessarily time-consuming.
I learned this a long time ago when I used to work with drawing and design software, where you had to remember a lot of keyboard shortcuts. Many people found it difficult and avoided them, but those small “inconveniences” actually made a huge difference later.
So my advice is simple: don’t avoid them. Get used to these small habits early on, because they will save you a lot of time in the long run.
Now I actually enjoy looking for these kinds of improvements. I find it interesting. For almost everything, I try to find a simple and efficient solution — whether it’s through Google, AI tools, or tutorials.
And I’d recommend the same to you: stay curious, keep learning, and always look for simpler ways to do things.
In my case, these shortcuts and small simplifications already make me about 70% faster in my daily work. My fingers literally “play the keyboard like a piano” without me even thinking about it anymore.
In most cases, the simplest solution is also the one that works best.
