6 Ways to Copy Paste Your Plain Text Without Formatting on Your Computer

In this world of technology, who doesn’t like shortcuts and easy ways to do something? We all like solutions that can make our life easy and quick. Especially with all the technology that we use, technological development leads us to a very new path to be very particular. But sometimes we face little problems as well in learning new techniques or technology. Because of that we sometimes might cause a huge blunder.

For example, we think copy-pasting is something that has helped a lot and saved us time. But sometimes while doing that we cannot paste the plain text there. Because our browser doesn’t offer that. Text formatting is something that annoys us the most when we copy/paste anything. Because usually we want a text to be just plain but we cannot.

So in this article, we are going to give you 6 ways to get rid of this problem once and for all. These 6 methods will make your life very easy and your writing quick. You now don’t need to waste your time on rechanging the format. This article includes various methods so that you can copy and paste your plain text. Such as apps, keyboards, shortcuts, and browser extensions. So let’s jump into the methods now.

Keyboard shortcuts.

• MS Word’s local option
• Browser extensions.
• Software (third party) on window
• Mac’s shortcut
• Notepad (on the window) close, TextEdit (on Mac)

1. Keyboard Shortcuts

A keyboard is a very easy piece of hardware as it is really easy to use a keyboard. Keyboard shortcuts are similarly very comfortable and the easiest way to paste your plain text and do not think about formatting on your computer. There is a very simple process to do that. You just have to press control + shift + ‘v’ in order to remove formatting on Windows.

This keyboard shortcut works in almost all browsers when you write in WordPress and many more applications as well. In Macbook, just press command + shift + option + ‘v\ to paste plain text in any document. Though the drawback of it is that MS Word doesn’t support this method. Apart from that it is a very easy method to copy and paste your plain text.

2. MS WORDS’ native option:-

There is a special paste option on the Ribbon in MS Word and you can paste your plain text without thinking about the change of formatting into MS Word.

You just have to copy your targeted text with the formatting and after that, you just have to paste with the paste button on the Ms word ribbon. You will be getting three options, they would be:-

1. Merge formatting
2. Keep source formatting
3. Keep text only.

And these three options work differently such as the First one will be keeping the basic formatting, for instance, bullet points and bold letters but it will change your text’s font as per your document. The second one will be keeping the original formatting only. And the third one will be pasting your copied plain text into the Word with stripping all the formatting.

3. Browser Extension

We are so advanced in technology that we can find solutions to any problem.  Similar to your problem with plain text formatting we have another way. Before copying/pasting we can remove all the formatting of your selected texts in Firefox and Chrome as we have many extensions for that. There are free as well as paid extensions. 

So I would like to name some. One is to copy plain text. It is a free extension. This is best for Firefox. There is another named ‘Copy as plain text’ that is best for Chrome. This one is free as well. Though they both are similar. You just have to add them (copy as plain text and copy plaintext) into the right-click context menu of your Browser.

Using the extension method for your browser is one of the easiest ways to copy and paste your plain text. They give you the option to keep the original formatting by just using COPY (a default option) in your browser or you can copy the plain text through the COPY PLAIN TEXT option.

4. Software (Third Party) On Windows-

Sometimes third-party software comes in handy. you just have to download it and there you go. so to copy-paste your plain text without formatting on your computers, you need third-party software. They are easy to use. For instance, PURETEXT (free) is a really easy lightweight utility, you just have to download it if you are using a Windows PC.

You can make PURETEXT more easy to use by adding hotkeys to your keyboard buttons. you can use hotkeys to paste without going through all that copy-paste shortcuts. The process is very easy, you just have to press the hotkey and more or less the default hotkey would be the Windows key. you just press the window key plus V(1). but you can change that as well according to yourself.

5. Mac’s Shortcut That You Can Create By Yourself.

 Technological development is so fast that it allows us to customize our preferences. For instance, you can use system preference on MAC to customize your copy-and-paste option. The process is simple as well. you just have to go to the menu of Apple after that ‘system preference’ and after that select ‘keyboard’. After that from the left pane opt for App shortcuts after moving to the shortcuts tab.

There you will see a ‘+’ icon at the bottom, you have to select that and a shortcut will be created for you for copy/pasting your plain text without formatting on your Mac. After that, in the MENU TITLE type PASTE AND MATCH STYLE, and you can customize and specify on your keyboard shortcuts keyboard your hotkeys.

Just note this then in the first field you just select ALL APPLICATIONS so that in all compatible apps the shortcut works. The last step would be just to click the ADD  button. And now your new keyboard shortcut is set.

6. Notepad (For Windows) Textedit (For Mac) –

This is very exhausting and time taking and it is not an easy way to copy and paste your plain text without formatting. Though it’s not hard it is simple. Why it’s exhausting because it is a two-step process. You just have to copy the text from where you want to pick it up. after that paste that into your NOTEPAD and after that copy that from your notepad and paste that into your Document. You will not be facing formatting issues in this though.

When we talk about Mac, for the same purpose, you can use TextEdit. It is an app. you just have to set it. for that, you have to go on the app TextEdit after that go to PREFERENCE and check the option or box named PLAIN TEXT. Now you are free to copy and paste your plain text and you will get it without formatting.

Conclusion

So these were some methods through which you can copy-paste your plain text without wearing about the formatting. apart from these, there are many other methods or documents that offer the same feature and options. No matter whatever method you use, we just hope that you are finally free from worrying about the problem of formatting. technology has indeed made life easy and it will continue to do so and similarly we are always there to guide you on technical stuff. So do let us know which of the methods you are using.