Copying and pasting text should be easy — but sometimes it just doesn’t seem to be!
Strange formatting. Weird spacing. Colours and styles you just can’t seem to get rid of.
In this video, I share my tip for using a plain text editor to quickly remove style information from formatted text and get back to whatever you were trying to do!
I’ve used this approach for years and continue to find it extremely valuable. While it doesn’t suit every situation, this handy little trick might just be a helpful addition for your toolbox too!
Let me know if you have found this helpful and share any questions you have.
Video transcript:
00:00:00:03 – 00:00:27:21
How can you go from this… to this? So you have control and can make this. Perhaps this has happened to you before. You get an email. Maybe it has a document attached or the text is pasted right into the email. And it looks something like this. Maybe it has been copy and pasted from several different sources and compiled into a single document.
00:00:28:05 – 00:01:00:28
And you’re expected to do something with it somewhere else. But it has all sorts of different fonts, font sizes, different formatting, line heights, different ways of emphasizing text. Many applications and websites use something called rich text. This is in order to make the text pretty. And some text editors are very fancy and they’re full of features. And others are more limited and only offer a certain subset of features.
00:01:01:04 – 00:01:23:19
But the whole point here is that to do this thing called rich text, or anything that provides extra styles or formatting, there is extra information associated with just that plain old text. And it’s hidden behind the scenes. There are many times when we copy rich text and paste it somewhere else. That extra information comes with it.
00:01:23:19 – 00:01:56:18
But every app might interpret it slightly different than another one. So, you see all these different behaviours where you’re stuck with formatting that you don’t want or you can’t seem to clean up. So, how are we going to work with this? Step one would be just try it and see what it looks like. See if it causes a problem. Sometimes you can paste into a certain app and find that you have exactly what you need and you should just go forward with that.
00:01:56:29 – 00:02:26:18
But if it doesn’t work out, there are some options. So, the first tip is whatever app you’re using — maybe you’re using Microsoft word — there are features already built in that allows you to paste your text without any of that formatting. So first, look for a feature like that. But if you can’t find a feature like that, or you just want to do the same thing no matter what app you’re working with, this is my tip for you.
00:02:27:07 – 00:02:52:16
We need a plain text editor or something that can work with plain text. Both Mac and Windows have apps that do this. Comes right with the operating system. In Windows that editor is Notepad. Notepad is a plain text editor. It doesn’t do anything but plain text, and it can be used for all sorts of handy things where you don’t want any kind of formatting.
00:02:52:16 – 00:03:09:18
For Mac, TextEdit is the built-in option. Here, you have to be careful. The default mode for TextEdit is actually the rich text editor. You need to change it into plain text mode before doing the steps that you see me do here.
00:03:13:24 – 00:03:45:06
Copy everything out of that source document. The rich text that has all the funny styles and wacky formatting. Whatever that is. Then, I paste it directly into my plain text editor, whichever editor that is. It doesn’t really matter as long as it is in a plain text mode. You can paste that in. And, immediately, I turn around and I copy that plain text and I paste it back into whatever it is that I want to be working with. Whether that’s a new document or an email that I’m sending to somebody.
00:03:45:15 – 00:04:08:21
But it cleans the text very quickly. And if all I need is the text, it works. I don’t have to play around with anything else. It also gives me a clean slate to start from. If I want to add some of that meaning of the formatting. Add back the same kind of emphasis on all those important places. And then you’re good to go.
00:04:09:13 – 00:04:31:27
So, your context matters. Where the emphasis is important matters. And where something isn’t so important – knowing the difference. And this is where if you’re not sure, you ask questions. Go back to the person that sent you the text in the first place. Make sure that you’re on the same page and that you understand the information that you’re working with, and the desired outcome.
00:04:32:03 – 00:04:39:24
Hopefully this tip will help you clean some text in the future, and I hope it’s valuable to you. Thanks for watching. Take care.
