Plain text

Plain text is text without formatting. It has no bold, italic, or underlined characters, embedded images, or clickable hyperlink formatting. A web address can still appear as ordinary text.

Plain text editors, such as Notepad, work without document formatting. Rich text editors, such as Microsoft Word, let you choose fonts, colors, and other styles.

When you paste text from a web page into a Word document, it may keep the original formatting. For example, your document uses 12-point Tahoma, but the pasted text appears in 10-point Arial. Removing formatting before pasting saves you from adjusting it manually.

Ways to remove formatting from the clipboard

• Use a plain text editor:
  • Copy the text from a web page or document.
  • Open Notepad or Flashnote, a handy tool for text notes.
  • Paste the text into the editor.
  • Select it and copy it back to the clipboard.
  • Paste it into your target document.
• Use our free Get Plain Text utility to remove formatting in one click.
• Use Clipdiary clipboard manager. Press Ctrl + Shift + V to paste the current clipboard contents as plain text.