5 Mistakes People Make When Copying and Pasting in an RFP

Reusing an old solicitation to write a new one is normal and sensible - almost every procurement office does it, and starting from a proven document beats starting from nothing. The risk is not the reuse; it is what survives the reuse unedited. Five things go wrong reliably: stale dates and figures, another project's requirements, internal information that was never meant to be published, formatting that fights the new document, and evaluation criteria that no longer match the scope.

What Goes Wrong When You Reuse RFP Content?

Which Sections Are Safe to Reuse?

The ones about you, not the ones about this project. Your organization's background, the administrative and submission instructions, standard terms and conditions, insurance and certification requirements and general contract clauses travel well between procurements, because they describe your organization and how it buys rather than what it is buying this time. Everything scope-specific has to be rewritten: the problem statement, the deliverables, the timeline, the evaluation criteria and the pricing structure. A useful discipline is to keep the reusable sections in a separate template so you are assembling from a maintained source rather than raiding whichever solicitation you happen to remember. It is the issuer-side equivalent of the content library a good bidder keeps.

How Do You Avoid Publishing Internal Information?

Assume anything you paste is public, because once the solicitation is posted it is. Draft RFPs get built from board memos, internal budget spreadsheets, staffing plans and consultant reports, and material from those sources arrives carrying context that was never meant to leave the building - a not-to-exceed figure you did not intend to disclose, a candid assessment of a current vendor, personal information about staff. Two habits catch most of it: paste as plain text so nothing arrives with tracked changes or comments attached, and have someone who did not write the document read it cold specifically looking for anything that should not be public. Check document properties too, since author names and edit history survive a save-as.

What About Pasting in AI-Generated Text?

It is the same failure with a faster source. Generated text arrives fluent, plausible and unattached to your actual project - which is exactly the profile of the copied paragraph that causes trouble, except that there is no original document to check it against. If you use a tool to draft sections of a solicitation, the verification burden goes up rather than down: every quantity, date, standard and reference has to be confirmed against something real before it is published, because bidders will price against whatever you post. Our guide to using AI in bids and proposals covers where the tools genuinely help and where they should not be trusted.

How Do You Keep Formatting From Breaking?

Paste without formatting, then apply your own styles. In Word and Google Docs that is Ctrl+Shift+V on Windows or Cmd+Shift+V on a Mac, which drops the source formatting and takes on the destination document's. It prevents the most visible symptom - a document in three fonts - and also the more damaging one, where pasted content carries its own numbering scheme and your section references stop matching your table of contents. Rebuild automatic numbering and cross-references after any large paste, and regenerate the table of contents last, once the section numbers have stopped moving.

What Should the Final Check Cover?

1. Every date. Release, questions due, addendum acknowledgement, submission, award, contract start. Search the document for the previous year.
2. Every dollar figure. Budget, insurance limits, bond requirements, not-to-exceed amounts.
3. Every proper noun. A previous project's name or a prior vendor left in the scope is the most embarrassing survivor.
4. The evaluation criteria against the scope. Every criterion should map to something you actually asked for, and every major requirement should be scored. Our guide to what makes a good RFP covers how to read the bids you get back as a check on the document.
5. The submission instructions against reality. Portal, address, format and copy count, all of which change quietly between procurements.

See How Others Word Theirs

Reading recent solicitations from comparable organizations is a better source for reusable language than your own last one. Browse open solicitations on Bid Banana.