How do I copy and paste from Chrome to Word without formatting?

May 30, 2012 5:38 PM

I just started using Chrome. I need to be able to copy text phrases from any random website into MS Word and have it be unformatted or better yet formatted as Times New Roman 12 pt. I'm on a mac. I've been trying to figure this out for so long that it's made me regress. Please talk to me like I'm five and help. HELP.

I'm not sure what else I can do to explain this seemingly simple problem. I tried the system pref/keyboard shortcut/app shortcut thing and it seemed like it worked once and then it stopped.

I added the Copy Without Formatting extension and it never worked at all.

Help, please, I'm tired of having to retype everything when that darn command v is right there.

posted by rabidsegue to computers & internet (14 answers total)

Right-click -> Paste Special -> Paste without formatting (at least in Word 2008 for OS X)
posted by one_bean at 5:41 PM on May 30, 2012 [2 favorites]

Copy from web then in Word: Edit > Paste special... > unformatted text
posted by GPF at 5:41 PM on May 30, 2012 [2 favorites]

Here's some useful info from a question at Superuser!
posted by Magnakai at 5:52 PM on May 30, 2012

Ditto the above. If you're familiar with Word macros at all (there are tutorials out there), you can save this one and then assign it a keyboard shortcut, which is what I do:

Sub PasteUnformattedText()
Selection.PasteAndFormat(wdFormatPlainText)
End Sub
posted by divisjm at 5:52 PM on May 30, 2012

I use Text Edit (and Notepad when I am on Windows). If you change the preferences to use Plain Text -- I think the default might be Rich Text -- I just:

- copy and paste into Text Edit
- immediately recopy (while it's still highlighted) and paste into Word.

Presto! It will be formatted however you like; if your default is TNR 12 it will paste into a new document as TNR 12.
posted by andrewesque at 5:57 PM on May 30, 2012

With Office 2011, Microsoft added the "Paste and Match Formatting" to Word so it will match the formatting of the document that you are pasting the text into (so if the document is Times New Roman 12, then that's what the . The keyboard shortcut is Shift+Option+Command+V.

It will maintain URLs the text as hyperlinks (in the same typeface as your document but underlined in blue).
posted by birdherder at 6:09 PM on May 30, 2012 [2 favorites]

I set this up once for a Mac that was running Word 2008 using the second AppleScript on this page. It worked just fine.
posted by bcwinters at 6:17 PM on May 30, 2012

Thanks for asking this! While the answers provided above seem much more efficient, I’ve been dealing with the same problem by always keeping a tab open to this text translation website and just copy/paste/recopying in the entry window.
posted by Kevtaro at 6:40 PM on May 30, 2012

Paste the text into Chrome's address bar. Then copy/paste it out from there.
posted by mshrike at 6:44 PM on May 30, 2012

This may just motivate me to update from word 2004. Thanks everyone. All answers have been helpful and also made me feel less like a lone loon.
posted by rabidsegue at 7:34 PM on May 30, 2012

Also, instead of using Word, you can paste into Text Wrangler (or BBEdit, but that costs money) and it will automagically strip out any formatting.
posted by slogger at 7:43 PM on May 30, 2012

I suffered from this problem for a long time, pasting from browser to Word and vice-versa and driving myself nuts. (I'm also on a Mac.) Thankfully, I recently came across a tiny app in the App Store called Format Match which generally speaking works perfectly to do as you ask. Once in a rare while, the native copy-and-paste behavior is actually preferable, but like I said, that's rare. Format Match is a godsend, and it's free.

It's also much simpler than any other solution posted here, at least in my experience, because I've tried them all. You simply set Format Match to load on startup and there it is, always operating in the background. It sits in Finder's menu bar so you can always turn it off if need be.
posted by Conrad Cornelius o'Donald o'Dell at 8:33 PM on May 30, 2012

Paste the text into Chrome's address bar. Then copy/paste it out from there.

I do this as well (but using the Firefox search field).
posted by EndsOfInvention at 2:45 AM on May 31, 2012

Easier than the above, imo is ALT-E-S, which gives you several pasting options. I use it frequently.
posted by Joseph Gurl at 4:39 AM on May 31, 2012