Copy and paste moves more than text. It often brings formatting from web pages and other documents. You can paste without formatting into almost any application to get only the text without additional formatting. Use this keyboard shortcut.
No formatting means no line breaks, no different font sizes, no bold and italics, and no hyperlinks. You won’t have to spend time removing formatting elements from your document. You will only get the text you copied as if you typed it straight into the app you paste it into.
To paste without formatting, press Ctrl + Shift + V instead of Ctrl + V. It works in a wide variety of applications, including web browsers like Google Chrome. It should work on Windows, Chrome OS, and Linux.
On a Mac, tap Command + Option + Shift + V to “paste and match formatting” instead. It also works in most Mac applications.
Unfortunately, this keyboard shortcut does not work in Microsoft Word. To paste without formatting in Word, you can use the special Paste option on the ribbon to “Keep text only”. You can also set Word’s default paste options to “Keep Text Only”.
Soon: How to change the default paste setting in Microsoft Word
If that keyboard shortcut doesn’t work in your app of choice, there’s always the low-tech way: open a plain text editor like Notepad, paste your text into it, then select and copy the text. You will get the plain text copied to your clipboard and you can paste it into any application.
For a faster way to do this, we’ve already shown how to use AutoHotkey to automatically remove all formatting from the text you copy to your clipboard.
