Paste Plain Text with TextExpander

Reader Chris sent me a great idea using Text Expander to remove formatting from text. Create a plain text snippet with nothing but the $clipboard command. When activated, it pastes sans format. Slick.

Comments

[ES]

Its much easier to use LaunchBar command+\

[SteveM]

David, this is great! On the PC I used a free app called PlainText to do this and have missed the functionality in OS X. Your post indicates $clipboard but the command in TE is %clipboard.

[Michael H. Gerloff]

Hi, David,
what do you mean with "when activated"?

Anyway, most of the time SHIFT+ALT+CMD+V will paste a plain text of the copied stuff in my documents.
But I guess I did not get the idea behind the snippet ...

[JCN]

The best wat to remove formatting from text is with a little program called CopyPaste that sits on your desktop and allows for hundreds of copypastes and many other things. (I have nothing to do with it, just an user.)

[William Lewis]

Very clever! Thanks for posting this tip.

[Clyde C. Cambridge]

Command+Option+Shift+V = Paste minus any formatting using just Mac OS X without an added app.

I've also found pasting into Spotlight or Dictionary and then selecting it again and pasting has format stripping abilities.

FIAT LUX!
C.C.C.

[Florian]

Hi David,

I like the idea, but what is your abbreviation for this?

Thanks,
Florian