A special paste feature presents a variety of options to a user for choosing the appearance of the pasted object or objects. When the user selects to specially paste the object, an interface is presented for the user to select from a variety of styles and format codes or predefined groups thereof to keep in the pasted object. Once the user selects the level of structure and formatting that he or she desires to import into the target document, the object will be copied into the target document or application using only the structure and formatting selected to remain by the user.