PlainPaste: copy, paste plain text when needed on Windows
PlainPaste is a free program for Microsoft Windows devices to copy, paste or cut plainly on demand independently of programs you are using.
If you copy or paste text on a Windows machine, the formatting of the text is copied along with it to the Windows Clipboard.
While that may be desired at times, it can be problematic if you need to paste the textual contents to an editor that supports the formatting, but want to paste it without it.
Some programs allow you to do that natively. Firefox and Thunderbird support the keyboard shortcut Ctrl-Shift-V for instance which always pastes text as plain text without formatting.
If the programs you use don't support this functionality however, you will have to find another way. Some users may paste the text to a plain text editor before they copy and paste it again to the program they want to paste it to without formatting. Works, but takes more time than it should.
PlainPaste
PlainPaste is a portable program for Windows that introduces the plain copying, pasting and cutting functionality globally.
Here is how it works. Instead of using the keyboard shortcut once to paste text, you use it twice to do a plain paste. The program delays the double-key presses a bit for that to give you enough time to press the shortcut a second time before the content is pasted.
This works really well, but has the disadvantage that you will notice a delay during regular pasting operations.
PlainPaste enables the option for pasting only by default. You need to open the preferences of the application to enable it for copying or cutting as well.
There you may also change the shortcut delay. You may need to experiment with the delay to find the right balance between firing the event off to plain paste, copy or cut, and the delay you are experiencing when using the normal copy, paste functionality.
So, if you need to use plain Clipboard operations at times, you may find the program useful for that as it retains the old functionality, but adds the plain options to it.
Closing Words
PlainPaste is a portable program for Windows designed to provide you with options to cut, paste or copy data without formatting to and from the clipboard.
It depends largely on how you work on Windows machines if you find the program useful or superfluous.
Now You: How do you handle plain pasting on Windows?
I have been using PureText to do this since around 2002. You can find it at http://www.stevemiller.net/puretext/
Came here to post this. PureText 4.0 is the current version and one of the first programs I install on any fresh Windows install. For the paste shortcut, I use “CTRL + Shift + V”. Works great!
http://stevemiller.net/puretext/
Since I don’t often need this strip function, I find it easier simply to use Notebook++ for the purpose. I try to avoid multiple programs that duplicate a single function unless I need that single function often.
Correction: Notepad++, not Notebook++.
Have a look also to this free program, I’m using it since many years: http://stevemiller.net/PureText/
I’ve been using PureText for more than 10 years. Just perfect.
+1 for that one.
Paste plain text (and copy/cut) Scripts from AutoHotkey Community – https://autohotkey.com/board/topic/10412-paste-plain-text-and-copycut/
“Some programs allow you to do that natively. Firefox and Thunderbird support the keyboard shortcut Ctrl-Shift-V for instance which always pastes text as plain text without formatting.”
I had not realized that Firefox had the functionality with Ctrl+Shift+V. The Firefox extension Adblock Plus (and typically those extensions forked from Adblock Plus) use Ctrl+Shift+V to display the blocked items window by default; so, many of us that use Adblock Plus or Adblock Plus forked extensions may have more difficulty using Ctrl+Shift+V to paste without formatting in Firefox. The Adblock Plus variable for Firefox to change the block items windows keyboard shortcut is “extensions.adblockplus.sidebar_key” and is of string type.
It seems that current versions of Adblock Plus are supposed to use its alternate keyboard shortcut conditionally in Firefox. I do not know what exactly those conditions are.
I did notice that installing a current version of Adblock Plus on a current version of Firefox on WIndows XP Professional with Service Pack 3 resulted in the keyboard combination of Shift+Ctrl+U being used to show the blocked items window instead of Shift+Ctrl+V.
OT: In addition to the (unfortunately discontinued) Adblock Edge, what forks of Adblock Plus are available?
The only forks I know of Adblock Plus are Adblock Edge ( https://bitbucket.org/adstomper/adblockedge/downloads ) and Adblock Latitude ( https://addons.palemoon.org/extensions/adblock-latitude/ ).
This looks great, but I would like the exact opposite. Perhaps the author will read this comment. :)
I would like Ctrl+V to paste without formatting, and double Ctrl+V (or preferably Ctrl+Shift+V) to paste with formatting. That would feel natural to me.
Most advanced text editors have a “Paste Special” option. I use that if I want unformatted text.
Instead of detecting that you have pressed Ctrl-V twice, why does the program not simply detect that you have pressed Ctrl-Shift-V once?
Many people already use a more sophisticated clipboard manager (such as Ditto) to keep all results of their last copy actions available. And often these clipboard managers (yes, like Ditto) already have their own plain-text filtering options built in.
I do like several of Skrommel’s compiled AutoHotkey scripts for their simplicity. Some of them are really useful. But I won’t need this one.
How is this not a standard feature yet? :<