PRE-formated text into DATABASE

Hi there, I'm tryng to make an online form which update the content of a database. I have tried it and it works BUT the user has to include all of the HTML tags otherwise the text which is pulled out (displayed on the webpage) from the database loose the pre-formated form. All the paragraphs are gone... and everything is just in one line. I'm just wondering if there is another way to preserve a pre-formated text (for example from Ms Word) that the user put into the form and the insert into the database without including the HTML tags. thanks. regards, Dani