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Three ways to quickly paste unformatted text in Microsoft Office

by Parm Mann on 23 June 2008, 12:17

Tags: Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT)

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Paste special made easy!

I just so happen to copy and paste ample amounts of text into Microsoft Word on a regular basis, and the fact that it copies over existing formatting has always been something of a niggle.

A niggle, it should be added, not big enough for me to warrant hunting a solution. Nonetheless, a solution presented itself today and it's become a niggle I'm glad to see the back of.

So, how do you get to that Paste Special function a little easier?

Well, it turns out there's three relatively easy workarounds:

  1. Copy and paste your text as normal, then, highlight the text and hit Ctrl+Space - this handy little shortcut will remove any existing formatting.
  2. Get rid of the niggle once and for all. In Microsoft Word 2007, navigate to Word Options (via the Office Orb), choose the Advanced tab and scroll down to Cut, Copy and Paste. Here you'll be able set Word to paste as text only from a variety of sources.
  3. Remember the key process. If you only need to paste unformatted text from time to time, hitting Alt, H, V, S, Up Arrow, Enter will do just the trick.

It's making my life a whole lot easier already!

Source: Digital Inspiration

HEXUS Forums :: 9 Comments

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Posted by Funkstar - Mon 23 Jun 2008 12:35
When copying really completex objects from the likes of Excel, i often have to use Paste Special -> Microsoft Office Excel Worksheet Document or Paste Special -> Picture (Enhanced Metafile)

Means it's a pain to edit it after, but it's the only way we can get out engineering calculations into our closeout reports for work :)
Posted by micronanopico - Mon 23 Jun 2008 15:25
My trick is to paste the text first in notepad and then copy & paste it again to the final application…
Posted by IBM - Mon 23 Jun 2008 15:55
yup, me too….and I don't do it often enough to warrent learning a new way of doing it. But thanks anyway ;)
Posted by Workaholic - Mon 23 Jun 2008 19:00
Same here, but if its in a table etc it can mess it up very bad.

Tip3 - what a long way to do it. Stick it in a macro…..
Posted by Bob Crabtree - Tue 24 Jun 2008 00:25
First off, thanks HUGELY to Parm for creating the article and associated thread.

The first tip - using Ctrl+Spacebar to make highlighted text revert to the bodytext format - is VERY interesting to me (as I'll explain in a bit) but not for use in Word.

I don't need it for the correction of text that's just been pasted into Word cos (in Word 2003, which is what I'm using here), I have set up a toolbar icon to paste in unformatted text - and use that VERY many times a week.

If anyone wants a quick walk-through of how to set up such an icon, just shout and I'll knock up something and paste it here.

For those who can't wait, the clue is that you record a macro, drag it to the toolbar and then change its icon to something that might help you to remember what it does.

No less important to me, I have also set up two formatting toolbar icons in Excel 2003.

One pastes only the formatting of the copied cell(s); the other pastes in only the value of a copied cell(s).

These I also find HUGELY useful - and have long used them. Every regular user of Excel that I've help create these icons also loves them.

Again, if anyone fancies having a walk-through, just shout.

Now for that Ctrl+Spacebar tip.

This is a massive thing for me because I've been hugely frustrated that Outlook (I'm using 2003) doesn't have a macro-recording facility. That's meant that I've been unable to create a paste-plain-text button.

So, I have had two options - neither of which is satisfactory to me.

The first was to use the Edit menu (Edit > Paste Special > Text), which is a bore.

Actually, in truth, up until five minutes ago, I didn't even think that Outlook had a Paste Special command!

That's because I have Outlook 2003 set up to create emails in HTML format and, if that's the case (as Outlook's help just explained to me), that menu option isn't there (likewise if you've chosen plain text emails - but, of course, in that situation, its absence is of no consequence!),

The menu option is only there if you've set up the program to create emails in Rich Text format.

To do that, you need to access the Tools menu and then:

Click Options, click the Mail Format tab and, in the ‘Compose in this message format’ list, select Rich Text.

Now, I can understand why the menu option isn't there for plain text but I reckon it's plain dodgy programming that it's not there for HTML.

Anyway, the inability to paste plain text has been a major bugbear with Outlook because what I've always had to do is paste stuff into a Notepad file, copy it from there and then paste it into the (HTML formatted) email that I'm writing in Outlook.

But, with the Ctrl+Space keyboard shortcut, all I now have to do is paste stuff into an email I'm creating, highlight it and use the shortcut.

Sweet!!

Though not quite as sweet as having a toolbar icon, of course.

But still a whole lot better than messing around with Notepad!

And this shortcut works whether you've got your email-creation format set to HTML or to RTF.

Of course, if you don't have the Ctrl button held down before you press the spacebar, then the highlighted text gets zapped!

Also, the shortcut doesn't work in WordPad - the text gets zapped even if you do have the Ctrl key held down before pressing the spacebar.

Bob C

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