Wednesday, May 15, 2013

Word 2010 keyboard shortcut to paste text only without formatting

When you paste using the right-click, you can select paste text only (which allows you to paste text using the formatting of the document that you are pasting into). Could there be a keyboard shortcut for this? Apparently yes, but it's not a simple keyboard shortcut, and there wasn't even an option before Word 2010.

The sequence is to use Ctrl-V to paste, which will paste using the undesired formatting of the text that you copied from. Then Word puts up that annoying tiny icon that blocks the text that you just pasted. Normally you would just hit ESC to make that thing go away so that you could work. At this point, push the Ctrl key and then let up on it, then press "t". The formatting of what wss just pasted reverts to the local formatting. Then click ESC.

Here's a link that explains this:

http://cybertext.wordpress.com/2012/11/21/word-2010-keyboard-shortcut-to-paste-unformatted-text/