Paste Unformatted Text with a Shortcut in Microsoft Word

Many times when you need to paste text from the web, an HTML document, or even other MS Word documents, you may want to just get the text without the formatting and styling that is carried with it. There are several ways to do that, but out of the box, Microsoft Word doesn’t give an easy way, that is with one keyboard shortcut, to do that. The easiest way available with Microsoft Word 2010 is to right click and then click the “A” icon (“Keep Text Only” icon). Now, this is easy but if you need to use that feature many times, it can get annoying and time waster.

The fastest way is to have a keyboard shortcut which does just that. What we are going to do is create a Word Macro and assign a shortcut to it. The following instructions were done using Microsoft Word 2010, but really this Word Macro can be used with almost all Word versions being used today.

Before we create the Macro, if the Developer tab is not visible, do the following to make it show up:

1. From the menu, click “File” then select “Options”
2. Select “Customize Ribbon”
3. On the right side under “Customize the Ribbon” section, check the “Developer” checkbox.
4. Then click the “OK” button.

Creating the Paste Unformatted Text Macro,

1. Select the “Developer” tab
2. Click the “Visual Basic” button.
3. On the left, in the Project panel, click the plus sign next to “Normal” to expand
4. Then click the plus sign next to “Modules”
5. Double click “NewMacros”
6. Copy and Paste the following code to the Code window in the Visual Basic editor. (put the mouse cursor at the end of the document before pasting to keep the previously created Macros)

   Sub PasteSpecial()
   Selection.PasteSpecial DataType:=wdPasteText
   End Sub
   

7. Click the “save” button. Once you do that a new Macro has been saved with name “PasteSpecial”
8. Close the Visual Basic window.

Assigning to the Macro a keyboard shortcut,

What we are going to do next is assign a keyboard shortcut to run the macro. We know that to paste text normally, we use ctrl + V keyboard shortcut, so it would be a good idea to assign our macro the alt + V to make it easy for us to remember and differentiate the normal paste from the special paste without formatting.

1. From the menu, click “File” then select  the “Customize Ribbon” tab
2. Look for the “Keyboard Shortcuts” label and click the “Customize” button
3. In the “Categories” section, click anywhere inside it and then press the “M” key so that it gets you to the Macros category.
4. At the right side and under “Macros” look for “PasteSpecial” and select it.
5. Then under “Press new shortcut key” label, put you mouse cursor in the field.
6. Press the keyboard combination alt + V (hold the alt key and then press the “V” key)
7. Then click the “Assign” button.
8. Then click the “Close” button to close the window, and then “Ok” for the “Word Options” window.

That’s it, now you have the keyboard shortcut alt + V to paste text without style or formatting.