PERRLA offers the best start-to-finish process for writing APA, MLA, and Turabian papers. But if you need to start using PERRLA Online partway through a paper, here's how to bring your existing content in.
PERRLA can't directly convert an existing paper into a PERRLA paper, but you can create a new paper in PERRLA Online and copy your existing content into it.
How to bring an existing paper into PERRLA Online
-
Open PERRLA Online and create a new paper.
Use the Create New button at the top of the page and enter the paper's information. - Open the existing paper with your already-written content.
-
Copy the text from the existing paper.
Highlight the text by clicking and dragging, then use Ctrl+C (Windows) or Cmd+C (Mac) to copy. -
Paste the copied text into the Editor tab in your PERRLA Online paper.
Use Ctrl+V (Windows) or Cmd+V (Mac) to paste. To avoid bringing in unwanted formatting, use Ctrl+Shift+V (Windows) or Cmd+Shift+V (Mac) to paste as plain text. -
Optional: Adjust the text styling.
If the text has lost its formatting, highlight it, click Text & Heading Style, and select the correct style from the side panel.
If your original paper had references and citations, you'll need to recreate them in PERRLA. Add references first using the References & Citations panel in the Editor tab. Learn how to create references.
Once you've added your references, replace any pasted citations with new PERRLA citations. Citations pasted in with the body text aren't connected to any reference in PERRLA – they're plain text. Recreating them with PERRLA ensures they're correctly formatted and will update automatically if you edit the reference. Learn how to create citations.
It may be a little tedious, but that's how you can take an existing paper and bring it into PERRLA Online.