Pasting unformatted text in word

May 30, 2007 8:18 AM

Pasting text in MS Word without formatting

I'm working on documents which require me to paste a lot from previous documents. The text size, color, etc are not standard. Is there a way to always use the current formatting when pasting in Microsoft Word?
I'm looking for the functionality found in Word by clicking on
Edit-->Paste Special-->Unformatted text but I want this option on all the time.
I know that I can take the old document and paste it into notepad which takes away the formatting or use the paste special option above but this would save so much time to just always paste unformatted text.

It would be great if there was a way to do this in Outlook as well...

posted by hokie409 to Computers & Internet (15 answers total)

Best answer: There's a utility called Puretext. If you use windows key + v it pastes without formatting.
posted by miniape at 8:22 AM on May 30, 2007

Here you go, courtesy of PC Magazine.
posted by O9scar at 8:24 AM on May 30, 2007

I'm not sure about what version of Microsoft Word you are using, but with at least the XP version, you should be able to paste some text in like normal. and an icon will come up after the text. If you click on it, it will give you an option to just paste the text without formatting.
posted by debit at 8:29 AM on May 30, 2007

copying it into the notepad and then copying from there should also kill any font info.
posted by noloveforned at 8:58 AM on May 30, 2007

You could record a macro that does the paste special option and assign it a keyboard command.
posted by yarrow at 9:01 AM on May 30, 2007

Yarrow beat me to it. This what macros were meant for.
posted by BitterOldPunk at 9:11 AM on May 30, 2007

Seconding noloveforned's pasting to notepad before copying and pasting into Word solution.
posted by boreddusty at 9:20 AM on May 30, 2007

Seconding PureText - I have introduced that to many coworkers, and they rave about how darn handy it is - and it's just a click in your Taskbar if you want to remove formatting.
posted by chr1sb0y at 9:37 AM on May 30, 2007

Not sure how much this will help, but learning the keyboard shortcut sequences for tasks like this has made some of them almost second nature. For pasting unformatted text, you'd press the following sequence of keys, one a time (e.g., don't hold them down, even the alt key): ALT-E-S-V-U-Enter. Cumbersome at first, but once you get the hang of it, it sure beats selecting options with the mouse.
posted by treepour at 10:11 AM on May 30, 2007

PureText has been my friend for quite a while now. Just a word of warning - some anti-malware programs will detect and remove it as a keystroke monitor or some such. I've only had this happen once - Keep the .exe file handy just in case.
posted by caution live frogs at 10:24 AM on May 30, 2007

What yarrow said. I finally made myself a macro after whining about the exact same thing, and it's made my life so much better! Well, at least it's made my cut-and-pasting a lot better. I used ctrl-V (on a Mac) for the keyboard command, to keep it close to the apple-V command.
posted by gingerbeer at 10:58 AM on May 30, 2007

I'm not sure about what version of Microsoft Word you are using, but with at least the XP version, you should be able to paste some text in like normal. and an icon will come up after the text. If you click on it, it will give you an option to just paste the text without formatting.

Another way is to open Styles and Formatting and delete all styles you're not using. Any styles you delete will default to Normal.
posted by mealy-mouthed at 11:07 AM on May 30, 2007

You could do what I did and add a "Paste Special" button to your toolbar, which at least saves you going to the "Edit" menu. You still have to select "Unformatted Text" in the dialog box though.
posted by pardonyou? at 1:44 PM on May 30, 2007

Word has a macro for this. Here's now to assign it to a keyboard macro.

1. Right click in the icon area at the top of the screen.

2. Click Customize at the bottom of the menu.

3. Click on Keyboard at the bottom.

4. In the Categories area, click on the drag rectangle and drag it all the way to the bottom.

5. Click on Macros.

6. Click in the Macros area at the right, press the letter P and then press the down arrow 2 times, to get to PastAsUnformattedText.

7. In the Press New Shortcut Key area, type your key combination. I use Shift-Alt-V.

8. Click on Assign and then on Close. Now, Shift-Alt-V will paste whatever is in the Copy buffer as unformatted text.
posted by KRS at 2:27 PM on May 30, 2007

In Excel, I use an icon for Paste Unformatted on the toolbar menu
posted by ohshenandoah at 8:47 PM on May 30, 2007