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macOS Quick Tip: Copy and Paste Text Without Formatting
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You and a couple others said this. It's genius. I don't get it either. I wonder if like you said it's a carryover from the 90s when there were also less oddities. Unfortunately I'm sure the current behavior is here to stay. This where the peanut gallery says, "Can't innovate my ass," right?
*Mind Blown* How did I not know this? I've been doing the whole paste into a text editor to strip formatting for so many years.
Furthermore, for some reason (and I just testing this on my Mac in Word...) when you paste with command-shift-V it's pasted as plaintext but when you follow the instructions in this post (comman-shift-option-V) it is pasted with MOST of the formatting removed (at least in Word) expect that the BOLD format sticks around so (again, at least for Word) this post isn't accurate.
and here was me thinking this actually WAS common knowledge 😅 then again, I've been using that command at work for years.
Still, good to know!
This is top tier tip. I had to install an app that runs in the background to achieve this simple need. I’m uninstalling that crap right now
One piece of software I cannot live without is clean text.
YesI bought it many years ago so I think around five or $10. Isaac continuously throughout the day I copy Text put it into clean text that strip away all formatting. The app also allows to do some mild cleanup if you want as well and then I paste its destination.
I never knew this keyboard shortcut, although obviously up in the Apple menu area is something called" paste and match style"
I've only been using Apple computers for 20 years or so so I guess I still need to learn a little bit more
YesI bought it many years ago so I think around five or $10. Isaac continuously throughout the day I copy Text put it into clean text that strip away all formatting. The app also allows to do some mild cleanup if you want as well and then I paste its destination.
I never knew this keyboard shortcut, although obviously up in the Apple menu area is something called" paste and match style"
I've only been using Apple computers for 20 years or so so I guess I still need to learn a little bit more
Well I can see people copying and pasting both from and to a formatted document and maybe you want move a title and a following paragraph someone and keep the formatting. For me, 95% of the time it just works as I'm either copying from and to a formatted document OR I'm copying from and to a plain text one. So only rarely would I need the special version of copy/past though it's nice to have it.
Now if I can just REMEMBER this. I'm no spring chicken you know.
If you're a Mac user with a Windows PC background, you'll probably know how to use the typical copy and paste commands in macOS. But there's a handy clipboard trick that's worth keeping in mind.
In Windows, the Copy and Paste key combinations are Control-C and Control-V, respectively. On the Mac, it's very similar – all you do is use the Command (⌘) key instead of Control.
But did you know that you can also paste text without its original formatting? Not knowing that this is possible on a Mac, many users paste text into a plain-format text editor to strip it of any styling before copying and pasting it again to its intended destination. But you don't have to do that.
If you'd rather directly paste the copied text elsewhere as purely plain text, use the key combination Command-Option-Shift-V and it will be automatically stripped of any formatting.
This is a system-wide shortcut, so you can use it almost anywhere in macOS that accepts text input.
Article Link: macOS Quick Tip: Copy and Paste Text Without Formatting
Not to be that guy.... re: MS being more user friendly - not quite. The CTRL key is positioned further away, while the Command key is much nearer, making it easier for the thumb to reach instead of the pinky. I believe Apple is more user-friendly than Microsoft.
This is one of the first things I do when I get a new mac. Another shortcut I add is for safari, Opt + Cmd + Q to overwrite 'Quit Safari'. I am always hitting Cmd+Q instead of Cmd+W to close a tab, which drives me crazy. I don't know why they don't have a dialog asking if you really want to quit.
I use this tip (keyboard shortcut) all the time on MacOS, really like it, wondering if there's a similar keyboard shortcut on Windows ?
I usually remap the key combos, switching these two, for applications I use regularly because "paste and match style" is what I actually want 99% of the time.
I've been using this for years and it works almost everywhere. In the few places that it doesn't work I have a shell alias called pbstrip that just runs pbpaste | pbcopy which always works for obvious reasons.
It’s just ctrl+shift+v on windows so actually easier, one less button to press
Is this different from “Paste and Match Formatting” option from the Edit Menu? I use that all the time.
omg this. It's highly unusual behaviour, probably indicative of not having received any formal tuition from anyone who knows how to operate a computer keyboard.
I saw this "paste and match style" since many years and never used it. Same for Smart Folders, what I simply never tried.
Just today I wrote an email and it got stuck while formatting, because I copied a few things into it. I could turn everything into bold, italic, another font, size, underline, color etc., but I wasn't able to take any of it back.
I copied everything into a plain text editor and from there back. 🙈 Instead I could have just closed Mail and that bug would be gone and the draft still there. I don't write often emails but this happened a few times in the last weeks.
It's like the disappearing cursor in MacRumors (maybe elsewhere too) that only happens in Safari and is gone after a Safari restart.
I often miss copy and paste in the right click menu and Menu Bar. It's very often greyed out and only the keys work.
I normally use right menu at first try and am already very fast in just formatting pasted text into mine. Sometimes I miss an empty line and the wrong format comes up again, what is annoying.
Just today I wrote an email and it got stuck while formatting, because I copied a few things into it. I could turn everything into bold, italic, another font, size, underline, color etc., but I wasn't able to take any of it back.
I copied everything into a plain text editor and from there back. 🙈 Instead I could have just closed Mail and that bug would be gone and the draft still there. I don't write often emails but this happened a few times in the last weeks.
It's like the disappearing cursor in MacRumors (maybe elsewhere too) that only happens in Safari and is gone after a Safari restart.
I often miss copy and paste in the right click menu and Menu Bar. It's very often greyed out and only the keys work.
I normally use right menu at first try and am already very fast in just formatting pasted text into mine. Sometimes I miss an empty line and the wrong format comes up again, what is annoying.
There should be some way to change the setting where paste without formatting is the default. That 4 key shortcut is crazy
Too bad Apple doesn’t let you reverse the keyboard shortcuts. More than 99% of the time I want to paste plain text.
I wonder if this people ever asked themselves what's the purpose of the shift key. perhaps they may think it's only to type the symbols above the numbers...
Think of this, people who operated a typewriter in the past don't do this; they do know how to use the Shift key.
That fourth key really is hard to hit. I wish they would prioritize this command higher up the shortcut food chain. It is one of the most common things I do but I end up using the menu bar so I don't have to do the hand contortions. My pinky is not well behaved enough to hit keys reliably.