Adjusting your default paste options in Office
If you spend a lot of time removing the formatting from text that you copy into Office documents (say, text from emails or web pages into Microsoft Word), you should adjust your default paste options.
The quickest way to do this in Office 2007 or Office 2010 is just to paste some text into your document and look for the smart tag icon:
Click the smart tag to open your Paste Options (note that smart tags in Office 2007 do not use the icons):
You could click the Keep Text Only icon (on the far right) but if you want to adjust your defaults, select Set Default Paste to open the Office application's options:
Set the defaults you want (I chose Keep Text Only for all) and click OK. Repeat for all of the Office applications you use regularly (Excel, PowerPoint and Word).
If you decide that you want to maintain the original formatting for a specific paste, you can easily override it on a paste-by-paste basis.
Suzanne
Comments
Anonymous
July 11, 2011
This seems to work for word and outlook, however, it does not work for excel...Anonymous
March 28, 2012
The comment has been removedAnonymous
June 12, 2012
Hi, There is not such option to "Set Default Paste..." in Excel 2010. There are no "Cut, copy and paste" options as pictured in Excel 2010. So please state clearly that the options you wish were in your software are not. And I am going to spend another extra 2 hours on my workbook now by clicking "Paste special"->"Unformatted text" if I want to achieve something with this Office 2010 nonsense... I wish my company would not sit in your pocket (or vice versa!) and would go for LibreOffice instead... :'( RegardsAnonymous
July 17, 2012
No such default option in Excel 2010Anonymous
August 08, 2012
Those options aren't there for Excel 2010. That's what I was really hoping to change this in. The default Ctrl+V action pastes and keeps the source formatting. You can change it afterwards, but that doesn't really work well when pasting from a source that has advanced formatting such as from certain websites with links. Excel has to "think" for a while before pasting. Wish I could just change the default to Paste Text OnlyAnonymous
November 29, 2012
I discovered by accident, that if you double click when selecting the destination cell, then Paste/CTRL-V gives you text only. Excel doesn't "think" for a while either.Anonymous
January 15, 2013
EDWARD YOU LIFESAVER "I discovered by accident, that if you double click when selecting the destination cell, then Paste/CTRL-V gives you text only. Excel doesn't "think" for a while either." that is his comment it helpsAnonymous
March 07, 2013
The comment has been removedAnonymous
March 11, 2013
That double click really helps in Excel. Thanks Edward.Anonymous
April 06, 2013
Edward rocks! The double click trick helps a lot!!Anonymous
May 16, 2013
alternatively, check out the utility called PureTextAnonymous
July 05, 2013
Edward rocks, thanks! It really helps to default paste as text in Excel 2013 on a single cell! But i still miss something really default! Paste source formatting in Excel is stupid most of the times, IMHO.Anonymous
July 22, 2013
Powerpoint has been owned by M$ for nearly 30 years now and something as simple as pasting plain text, for which there is obviously (any google search will demonstrate) overwhelming demand, they fail/refuse to implement. instead, with every paste I have to click on the stupid "smart" tag to open it, click to select "Keep text only". my thumb hurts from all the clicking. I so hate proprietary software run by giant imbecile corporations.Anonymous
July 31, 2013
edward I owe you like something like 2000 hours of labor because of that, thanks manAnonymous
October 15, 2013
I tried this, but Excel does not treat the pasted content as text. It deletes all leading zeros, and converts all bank account details into "date", some very long codes (all numbers) get changed. How do you make Excel paste the text as text? (Excel 2010)Anonymous
October 27, 2013
The comment has been removed