Headlines - Three ways to quickly paste unformatted text in Microsoft Office

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Does it annoy you when copying and pasting text into Microsoft Word brings with it all sorts of formatting? Here's some quick workarounds.

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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 :)

My trick is to paste the text first in notepad and then copy & paste it again to the final application...

yup, me too....and I don't do it often enough to warrent learning a new way of doing it. But thanks anyway ;)

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.....

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

Just to say again - Parm - MANY thanks!

Cheers

Bob

re the pasting: why not simply use the smart tags? fast enough for me........

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Originally Posted by fuddam

re the pasting: why not simply use the smart tags? fast enough for me........

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Dear Cryptic,

Care to share you knowledge?

Mr Ignorant

oh, sorry, lol.

I meant that if one pastes between / within office apps, the smart tag pops up alongside the pasted item, before you do anything else. Bottom right, PASTE icon.

Can select paste format from the tag, which usually includes an 'unformatted' option. Is a shortcut to most Paste Special operations.