How to Remove Formatting From Copied Text (Paste as Plain Text)

To remove formatting from copied text, paste it into a plain-text cleaner: fonts, colours and links disappear on paste. Then fix what's left: curly quotes, invisible spaces, extra spaces and lines broken in the middle of sentences. Copy the clean result back. The free Remove Formatting tool does all of this in one place, and your text never leaves your browser.

Why does copied text keep its formatting?

When you copy from a website, Word or an email, your computer copies two versions: rich text (with fonts, sizes, colours and links) and plain text. Most apps paste the rich version, which is why the font changes or a background colour appears in your document. Pasting into a plain text box keeps only the words.

But plain text can still be messy. Common problems:

• Hard line breaks at the end of every line, from PDFs and some emails.
• Invisible characters like non-breaking spaces and zero-width spaces, from websites.
• Curly quotes and long dashes (“ ” ‘ ’ —) that break code, spreadsheets or forms.
• Double spaces and tabs.
• Bullets and numbering copied as characters.

How do you use the Remove Formatting tool?

1. Open Remove Formatting.
2. Paste your text. Fonts, colours and links are dropped straight away.
3. Choose the clean-ups you want:
   • Curly quotes and dashes to plain
   • Remove invisible and non-breaking spaces
   • Collapse repeated spaces and tabs
   • Trim spaces at line starts and ends
   • Remove empty lines
   • Join wrapped lines into paragraphs
   • Remove bullets and numbering
   • Remove emojis
   • Remove links (URLs)
4. Check the summary of what changed.
5. Copy the result or download it as a .txt file.

How do you fix text copied from a PDF?

PDF text is the classic problem: every line ends with a break, so a paragraph pasted into Word or an email looks like a poem. Turn on Join wrapped lines into paragraphs: line breaks inside a paragraph become spaces, while the blank lines between paragraphs stay. Then turn on Collapse repeated spaces.

If you only need everything on one line, for example a list of names for a form, the Remove Line Breaks tool is quicker; see how to remove line breaks from text.

Why do curly quotes cause problems?

Word processors and websites replace straight quotes (" ') with typographic “curly” ones, and hyphens with long dashes. They look nice in prose, but they:

• break code, commands and formulas,
• confuse CSV files and spreadsheets,
• fail some web forms and password fields.

Curly quotes and dashes to plain swaps them for the simple keyboard versions.

What are the keyboard shortcuts for plain paste?

• Windows and Linux: Ctrl+Shift+V in most browsers and many apps.
• Mac: Cmd+Shift+Option+V in many apps (Paste and Match Style); Cmd+Shift+V in Google Docs.
• Microsoft Word: Paste Options → Keep Text Only.

These shortcuts drop fonts and colours, but they don't fix hidden characters, broken lines or curly quotes. That's where the tool helps.

When is this useful?

• Pasting research from websites into a report without odd fonts.
• Moving text from a PDF into an email or document.
• Cleaning product descriptions before uploading to a shop or marketplace.
• Preparing text for a spreadsheet, CSV or database import.
• Writing captions or posts without stray emoji or links.
• Making sure a word count isn't thrown off by junk characters.

Privacy

Many online text tools send what you paste to a server. This one doesn't: the cleaning happens in your browser, so contracts, emails and drafts stay on your device.

Clean your text now

Paste into the free Remove Formatting tool. Then count it with the Word Counter, fix capitals with the Case Converter, or tidy a list with Remove Duplicate Lines.