Error on cut & paste into textarea field

[gnurps]

Howdy out there.
I've got a science conference registration system running on PHP/FX, FMP7 Server Advanced. One of the functions is for people to add an abstract of their presentation. The page works fine when you type in the data. But when you cut and paste into one field, the new record or edit record functions fail. That field is the abstract itself, and the pasted text can be long. But length does not seem to matter. What does seem to matter is whether or not the pasted text comes from a formatted Word file vs. a text-only ASCII file. Cutting and pasting from the ASCII files works; no error. The submission also works works if you cut and paste into other fields on the form from the same formatted Word doc. The difference is that those fields are <input type="text"> whereas the broken one is a <textarea> field.

I wonder if there is some PHP function that would strip formatting before the field goes into the database. Or maybe there is something about textarea fields and how one should handle them?

Thanks in advance.
Gary Sprung