Remove Text Formatting
Paste from Word, a web page or a PDF and get clean plain text, without fonts, colours or hidden characters.
Guide & FAQWhy pasted text drags its formatting along · What plain text still carries · Text copied out of a PDF · The keyboard shortcut, when the app has one · Frequently asked questions
Why pasted text drags its formatting along
When you copy from a web page, Word or Google Docs, the clipboard holds two versions of the same text: an HTML version with every font, colour, size and link, and a plain-text version. Gmail, Outlook and most editors take the HTML one when it is there, which is why a pasted paragraph keeps its grey 11-point Calibri and keeps imposing it on whatever you type after it. This page reads the HTML version only to learn the structure — where the paragraphs, list items and table cells are — and throws the styling away.
What plain text still carries
Even the plain-text version can bring trouble you cannot see:
| Character | Where it comes from | What it breaks |
|---|---|---|
| Zero-width space (U+200B), word joiner (U+2060), BOM (U+FEFF) | Web pages, chat apps, CMS editors | Searches and comparisons fail on text that looks identical; passwords and codes pasted into forms are rejected |
| Soft hyphen (U+00AD) | Justified web text, ebooks | Words split by an invisible hyphen do not match a search |
| Direction marks (U+200E, U+200F, U+202A–U+202E) | Text copied near Arabic or Hebrew, phone contact cards | Phone numbers and IDs that will not validate |
| Non-breaking and narrow spaces (U+00A0, U+202F) | Word, French typography, prices like "10 €" | Spreadsheets read "1 000" as text; code fails to parse |
| Curly quotes and long dashes | Word and macOS autocorrect | Shell commands, JSON and config files stop working |
The report under the result lists exactly what was removed and how many of each, so a "why does this not match" problem has an answer.
Text copied out of a PDF
A PDF has no paragraphs, only lines placed on a page, so copied text arrives with a line break at the end of every printed line and words hyphenated across them. "Join lines broken mid-sentence" puts each paragraph back on one line and rejoins exam- as
pleexample, while keeping blank lines, list items and table rows where they were.
The keyboard shortcut, when the app has one
Many apps can paste without formatting themselves: Ctrl+Shift+V in Chrome, Edge and Firefox (including Gmail in the browser) and in recent Microsoft Word, and ⌥+⇧+⌘+V ("Paste and Match Style") on a Mac. That drops fonts and colours but keeps the invisible characters and the broken PDF lines, and some apps and web forms have no such shortcut at all — that is where this page helps.
Frequently asked questions
Is the text I paste sent anywhere?
No. It is processed by the script on this page in your browser. The page’s security policy does not allow it to send data to any other site, which you can check on the privacy page.
Does it keep bullet points and tables?
Yes, as plain text. List items start with "• " or their number, and table cells are separated by tabs, so a pasted table goes into a spreadsheet as columns.
Why do two pieces of text look the same but do not match?
Usually because one contains an invisible character — a zero-width space or a non-breaking space — that the other does not. Paste it here and the report names each one it found.
Will it change my quotes and dashes?
Only if you tick those options. They are off by default because curly quotes and long dashes are correct in prose; turn them on when the text is going into code, a command line or a system that only accepts ASCII.
Can I keep the links?
Tick "keep link addresses" and each link is written as its text followed by the address in brackets, so nothing is lost when the link itself is stripped. It applies to the next paste, or to the current one if you have not edited it.