What did I do without this program?
Oh yeah. I used Notepad.
This is waaay easier!

It’s probably safe to say that everyone has copied text from a webpage at some time and pasted it into an email or into a Word-like program. So, of course, you can re-late to my dismay of pasting the type complete with its formatting riding piggyback on it.

I always have to stop what I’m doing and unformat and reformat the type, so it blends in with what I’m working on.

I can hear “old timers” yelling, “Notepad! Use Notepad!”

That’s true. And, it’s a good option. I’m using Windows XP (still), so I have a shortcut to Notepad on my Start menu. It’s very easy to click on Start while I have my browser open and click to open Notepad to paste the web text, then recopy it from Notepad, and repaste the text into a document.

But, I found a simpler method. Really. There is no learning curve.

I only have to click once after copying from a webpage and then I can immediately paste unformatted text into anything anywhere!

With our typical complicated programs to work with, this just doesn’t seem possible. Or, maybe alchemy might be involved!

The short of it is that this is true, no hocus pocus. It is possible with a tiny program called Get Plain Text. It’s only 70Kb and it doesn’t add an icon to your system tray or grab any memory when you use it.

It works in less than a second to remove text formatting, including fonts, sizes, colors, and embedded images. It just leaves plain text.

Download the program from the developer at http://clipdiary.com/getplaintext/. Save it to your preferred disk location. Click on the programto run it. Add the icon that launches Get Plain Text to your Quick Launch bar or favorite program launcher.

I keep it on my Quick Launch bar. As soon as I copy something to the clipboard, I click on the Get Plain Text icon. Then, I paste the text anywhere I desire. That’s it.

When I use Get Plain Text, no window opens. There are no dialog boxes or preferences to select. There are no flags, bells, or whistles to tell me it is finished. It simply works fast,silently, and unobtrusively.

Did I mention — it’s free!

by Linda Gonse
ORANGE COUNTY PC USERS GROUP — OCTOBER 2011