How to Copy and Paste Plain Text

Microsoft Word allows copying and pasting without the original formatting.

Copy and paste allows the user to make a copy of selected words in a document and paste them to a different document. Traditional copying and pasting retains any special formatting done in the original document. Now users have the ability to copy formatted items and paste them without copying their format. This allows the ability to copy items from documents that may have special font, heading formats, hyperlinks, bold print and other formats into simple text and paste into the document of choice.

Things You'll Need

• Microsoft Word

Instructions

1. Highlight text you would like to format. Simply press and hold the left mouse button while moving the mouse from left to right over the text.

2. Press "Control" and "C" simultaneously to copy the text.

3. Open a blank Microsoft Word document.

4. Press "Control" and "V" simultaneously in the Word document to paste the text.

5. Click "Paste Options" that appears immediately after the text is pasted. "Paste Options" is a box that appears as a yellow clipboard with a white document on top of it all within the box.

6. Select "Keep Text Only."

Tips & Warnings

• You can also copy and paste without the original formatting into WordPad, then copying from WordPad into a Word document.

References

• Paste plain text into Word