When Users do a copy & paste from Word, Outlook, or WordPad into a paragraph

We had the same problem. Our only "solution" was to not use rich text form fields. We made sure that line breaks are preserved and are converted to "<br />" as needed for correct display.

Thank you but, the rich text functionality is there to be used. Some of our users need that feature. Should not have to take this feature away from our users. Why is the HTML code being displayed?

The problem is that when you copy formatted text from some Office product this product tries to be clever, detects that the paste target is a browser and creates HTML on the fly. This is saved in your text field but cannot be displayed correctly. I found no solution for that. You could train your users to not copy formatted text into Appian forms or use some tool that removes formatting while copy&paste.

What version of Appian are you seeing this behavior in? In recent versions the XML tags are shown depending on whether or not you allow access to the clipboard when you paste (an popup with an option is displayed when pasting). Also, rich text in Forms Designer paragraph fields is not compatible with Tempo forms - consider moving to Tempo/SAIL for a range of improved features.