Clean Up Formatting with a Text Editor
When copying and pasting text from one program to another often the formatting is messy or does not look right in the destination program. Each program formats text differently, when you copy text from one program to another you are also copying formatting such as font type, size, color and more.
Some programs allow you to paste text without pasting the formatting, for example, Microsoft Office programs offer several different paste options, including “keep text only” or “merge formatting”
However, these options are not offered in all programs, so the solution is to use a text editor to clean up the formatting.
Windows and Mac both come with a basic text editor, in Windows you can use Notepad, on a Mac you can use TextEdit.
To open Notepad in Windows use the search box to find the program, on a Mac, click the spotlight icon and search for TextEdit.
After you open TextEdit, if you see formatting options at the top of the window, such as font and alignment, that means TextEdit is set to edit rich text files, you want to change to plain text by clicking format > make plain text.
Using the text editor method will let you copy text from any program and then paste it into the editor, when you do this all formatting will be removed, you can then copy the unformatted text and paste it into the destination program.
This is how you do it,
Open the file or program, for example a browser or a Word document that contains the text you want to copy.
Select and copy the text you want to transfer.
Move to the text editor and press Ctrl+V (or Command+V) to paste the text.
After pasting the text press Ctrl+A (or Command+A) to select all of the text.
Press Ctrl+C (or Command+C) to copy it.
You can now paste the text wherever you want with all of the formatting removed.
The Tech Minimalist 