‘Paste Special’ for headache relief

October 11, 2004 / Filed under: Software, Usability

Ever notice that when you copy/paste text from another program to Microsoft Word or PowerPoint – the text never looks the way you want it to? It’s always either truncated or enlarged, in a different font, centered, flush right, and RED.

Okay, maybe that’s a bit extreme, but the text is always messed up in SOME way.

What a pain this is. How can anyone be productive with performance like this?

Lately I’ve been using "Paste Special...," which pastes just the text, without formatting applied.

This option is usually located under the Edit menu:

Edit > Paste Special

Once you select "Paste Special...," a dialog box will prompt you for further information. If you select "Unformatted Text," your copied text will paste without formatting applied.

Select Unformatted Text

This has saved me loads of time and frustration, and certainly increased my productivity.

My only issue is that there is no immediate keyboard shortcut for "Paste Special..." You have to go to that menu every time. That is a pain.

But it’s still better than the old way.

Comments/Mentions

# dale at 10/12/2004 1:57 am cst

Paste Special is very useful. Although normally I'd just paste it into notepad and then copy it out again. Although your way is easier :p

# Chad Cooper at 10/13/2004 6:23 am cst

Ahhh, a man of my kinda thinking. Always coming up with ways to get around the quirks of Microsoft products. I will keep this in mind, I have that problem alot also. But a shortcut key would be sweet as pie, wouldn't it? I am a HUGE fan of Ctrl-C / Ctrl-V. Sometimes my left pinkie finger gets sore from going over to the Ctrl key so much.

# Greg at 3/24/2005 10:52 pm cst

Check out
http://www.vbaexpress.com/kb/getarticle.php?kb_id=18
and http://stevemiller.net/puretext/

# Anthony at 8/29/2007 12:53 pm cst

How can I set up Word so that it always Pastes Unformatted text as the default?