PureText makes pasting pure text purely simple
Can you say: “PureText makes pasting pure text purely simple”, fifty time really fast? Ha!
Whatever email program you use, you’ve likely encountered this problem: You’re writing and email and you copy text from a Web page or a Word doc or PDF file, and paste it in your email. You notice that the font is different, the font size is different, the style is different — in short it looks awful. And just bad, everything you type after you paste something is in the same font and style as what you just pasted.
You can avoid pasting formatted text into a formatted email several ways. One way is to open NotePad (or some other text editor) and paste the text then copy the text from NotePad and paste it in your email. But there’s an easier way.
Sometimes, when we’re doing our newsletters, we’ll copy something from our Web site and paste it the HTML document, or we’ll copy part of a news article for our Newsbytes section, like email, pasting formatted text directly into a HTML (Web page) document results in the fonts and styles being changed. This would result in a messy newsletter with several different fonts, font sizes and font styles — and that would be distracting and look awful. So we always pasted the copied text in to MetaPad (a text editor) then copy it from there and paste in the newsletter. Pasting formatted text into a text editor like MetaPad or NotePad removes all the formatting and converts it to plain text.
We have started using a program called PureText which allows us to copy formatted text and paste it into a HTML document (or an email) without pasting it in a text editor, by simply pressing Windows Key + V.
If you often pasted formatted text from Facebook, Web sites, Word docs, PDF docs, etc. into emails or web documents, you’ll find that PureText can save you a lot of time.
Here’s a bit from the developer’s site:
“Have you ever copied some text from a web page or a document and then wanted to paste it as simple text into another application without getting all the formatting from the original source? PureText makes this simple by adding a new Windows hot-key (default is WINDOWS+V) that allows you to paste text to any application without formatting.
After running PureText.exe, you will see a “PT” icon appear near the clock on your task bar. You can click on this icon to remove formatting from the text that is currently on the clipboard. You can right-click on the icon to display a menu with more options.
The easiest way to use PureText is to simply use its hot-key to paste text instead of using the standard CTRL+V hot-key that is built into most Windows applications. To configure PureText, right-click on its tray icon and choose “Options” from the pop-up menu. The default hot-key is WINDOWS+V, but this can be changed. In this Options window, you can also configure PureText to run each time you log into Windows.
What PureText Will and Will Not Do
PureText only removes rich formatting from text. This includes the font face, font style (bold, italics, etc.), font color, paragraph styles (left/right/center aligned), margins, character spacing, bullets, subscript, superscript, tables, charts, pictures, embedded objects, etc. However, it does not modify the actual text. It will not remove or fix new-lines, carriage returns, tabs, or other white-space. It will not fix word-wrap or clean up your paragraphs. If you copy the source code of a web page to the clipboard, it is not going to remove all the HTML tags. If you copy text from an actual web page (not the source of the page), it will remove the formatting.
PureText is basically equivalent to opening Notepad, doing a PASTE, followed by a SELECT-ALL, and then a COPY. The benefit of PureText is performing all these actions with a single Hot-Key and having the result pasted into the current window automatically.”
We know that know some of you probably would never need a great little tool like this, but many of you know the hassle of cross-formatting when pasting from one format into an email. While you could paste whatever kind of formatted text and change your email to plain text, you’d end up with plain text email — and no styles or fonts or pictures allowed.
You can get PureText in 32-bit or 64-bit format. It works on all versions of Windows from XP through Windows 10. It does not install – it’s a zip file, just unzip it and click on the exe file to run it. You should of course, right-click on the exe and create shortcuts on your start menu, taskbar, or desktop, to make it easier to run it next time. The file sizes (both 32-bit and 64-bit) are under 20 KB…. so it’s a tiny program you might find very useful. You can read more about and/or download PureText from here.
PS: We use PureText to paste developer’s descriptions for our Site Picks and Freeware Picks. We just scoop up some text from the developer’s site and use PurtText to paste it in our newsletter. If we pasted it directly into the newsletter, it would not keep the format of our newsletter. We do use what we recommend, you see?
In Gmail there are already two built in choices for plain text copying or
1. select your text to copy – right click on the message box and select ‘paste as plain text’
2. select your text to copy and in the ‘More Options’ down arrow dialogue box at the bottom right of your Gmail message screen select ‘Plain text Mode’.
No need for add ons
Even if the only program we copied from with was Gmail, it’s still takes more time to go through the steps your indicate than to run a tiny program that coverts ANY text to plain text (Chrome or not) by just copying the text normally and pressing Windows Key + V. We’re not talking about a huge add-on or program here, Pure Text is less than 100kb (that’s 1/10 of a megabyte).
How do you figure the options in Chrome are simpler than pressing Windows Key+V to paste plain text. And what about copying from PDF files, Word Documents, etc.
Nope, we know about Chome’s plain test options (other browsers have the same feature or add-ons which does the same thing). PureText saves us time in a variety of circumstances. We’ll stick with it 🙂
I only use Gmail – would not touch the others – not reliable – have six accounts for different needs.
What I am trying to point out is another (more simple way) for this task. Id admit that in HTML for web sites pasting I do use Notepad.
In Word you just use Paste Special. You can also set Default Paste options (Use Destination default). No add ons, automatic.
HTML and PDF work OK too.
Well my friend, you have really got me here. I am lost. I don’t see how all that opening menus and selecting this and that for different things ie easier than pressing two keys, but if you believe is, then keep doing it your way.
There are hundreds of millions of people who would take exception to your statement that chrome is the only reliable browser. I’m sure most Apple users and Firefox users would strong disagree, as would I. I use chrome because I like it but to say it’s the only reliable browser is not true.
This thread is closed. You’ve made your point. You think opening menus and selecting is easier than pressing two keys – and I disagree.
You are allowed your opinion.