How to Cut and Paste "Clean" Text from One File to Another in Windows

How to Cut and Paste "Clean" Text from One File to Another in Windows

This Windows Tutorial is one of my most popular.

Say you want to copy some text from a webpage into a Word document. You probably already know that you can copy and paste the text using the generic steps below:

1. Highlight the text you want to cut and paste with your mouse, and then press Control + C on your keyboard.
2. To paste the text, put your cursor in the receiving document, and press Control + V to paste it.

Simple, right? Except that when you copy from a webpage or from another Word document, all the formatting comes with it, and messes up the formatting of the document you're working in. Annoying.

You could paste it into a new page and manually remove all the formatting, but here's an easier way:

1. Highlight the text you want to cut and paste with your mouse, and then press Control + C on your keyboard.
2. Open Word, and click on the Edit menu.
3. Click on Paste Special
4. From the Paste Special dialog box, choose Unformatted Text and click Ok. Voila, nice clean text!