I've always wanted a way to copy and paste without dragging text formatting along with it. It's clever and all that modern clipboards will remember the typeface, size and color of text being copid out of a web browser, but it's almost never what I want when I paste it into an email, a Word document, or a Stickie note. It appears SmartWrap is one possible solution, though its clipboard cleaning is not automatic, and if that's all I'm using it for, it may not be worth the $18 shareware cost. But it has many modes of use that might come in handy if you do a lot of text manipulation across apps. There are versions for Mac OS X, Mac Classic, and Windows, too.
January 21, 2004
comments...
On the Mac, I wrote an AppleScript that strips the formatting off the clipboard. Using Keyboard Maestro I assigned the script to Command-Shift-V (along with a Paste command afterward). Now when I want to paste unformatted, I just hit Command-Shift-V. If you don't have Keyboard Maestro, you could still keep the script handy to run whenever you want to strip the formatting from what's on the clipboard.
The script is stupidly simple. Here it is in its entirety:
set the clipboard to (get the clipboard as text)
Awesome, Jerry! Thanks!
I encounter this problem ALL THE TIME. Microsoft word has a "Paste Special" with a dialog box and a "text only" option, but it's nothing I think you can map to a keyboard key. Adobe InDesign doesn't even seem to have a paste as text.
I Generally keep a notpad window open as a translation. Cut the text, paste it into Notepad and BAM you've got unformatted text. Then CTRL-A, CTRL-C, and paste it into the application.
It works, but it's definately like 5 too many facking steps.