I want my paste plain

Let me make this clear: When I paste, I want the text to match the document it’s going into. This is why I’d prefer Paste Special / Plain Text to be the default.

So why does Paste Special / Plain Text keep disappearing out of my corporate copy of Outlook 2003? If I’m stuck with rich formatted emails, I damn well want whatever I paste into them to match the text.

But every app wants to bring its own format across. Even Visual Studio for heaven’s sake. I end up having to paste it into Notepad, then copy/paste to the destination.

Very annoying.

There are a couple of ways of making plain text pasting the default: you can define a macro in Word or here’s a crankily-named Outlook macro. If you’re aiming to get it everywhere, it looks like you’ll require a program: either Cliptext or PureText would appear to do it (in slightly different ways).

3 thoughts on “I want my paste plain

  1. bl0rq

    I only have the 2007 beta on my machine right now, but i am pretty sure it is in the mess of options somewhere in 2003. Under Options -> Mail Format -> Editor Options, it lets you specify copy/paste options for from same email, between emails, and other programs to Keep Text only, Keep source formating, or match destination formating.

    Hope that helps a bit.

  2. Chris

    >> I end up having to paste it into Notepad, then copy/paste to the destination.

    Hehehe – I thought I was the only one constantly doing that 😉

  3. Massimo

    Use word as email editor and it cut and paste works (as it usually work in word)! Word is a little bit heavy just for editing email but…

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