RQM will not Save a Test Case which has data pasted into it

When I add data to a Test Case in RQM using copy and paste from a Word doc the test case will not save. The Save process appears to be running and has been left for over an hour but ultimatley the save does not happen and the data is lost. If the data is manually entered the Save works fine. If data is copied and pasted into an RQM Test Script from a Word doc the save of the test script works fine.

This has lost me a lot of time. Any suggestions for a fix would be apprecaited.

Thanks

Hi Chris,

Copying & pasting from MS Office into the RQM WebUI can (and usually does) introduce issues with malformed/non-standard XML being written to the RQM database. Even if the Save operation were to succeed, you would likely see other problems at a later time caused by the invalid data, including (but not limited to) problems with WebUI display, unexpected behavior when running reports, and malformed PDF prints. For all of these reasons, I strongly recommend against this usage pattern.

Instead, if you need to copy & paste from MS Office, first copy & paste into Notepad. Then copy & paste again from Notepad into the RQM WebUI. This will ensure that you are pasting only valid, unformatted plain text into the WebUI.

The other option is to use the "Validate Content" button, which is designed exactly for this use case -- it scrubs the contents of the rich text field and removes any malformed/non-standard XML. You should be sure to always click this (and let it complete) before clicking Save when you copy & paste directly from MS Office.

Here's a screenshot illustrating the "Validate Content" button:
http://img577.imageshack.us/img577/4468/snap1879.jpg

For additional information, see Editing test artifacts with the rich-text editor in the documentation, which mentions:

Note: Any time you copy and paste text into a rich-text editor section, be sure to click the Validate Content icon Validate Content icon.

Cheers,
Patrick