Word: Keyboard shortcut to paste unformatted text
Copying text from one Word document to another can be problematic, especially if
you’re using templates and styles. Things can go wrong. Text can take on the styles of the
destination document/template or keep its own styles. And sometimes you don’t want to
keep any of the styles in the original text — you just want to paste in the text without any
formatting.
Word has several ways you can achieve this, some more convoluted than others, but as
far as I know, there’s no standard keyboard command to paste text in as unformatted text.
(Update: There is in Word 2010!)
Some of the standard methods within Word 2003 and 2007 are:


Paste the text and click the little icon at the bottom right of the pasted text, then
select Keep Text only. You have to do this immediately after pasting — as soon
as you move away and do something else with the document, the icon option is
gone.
Select Edit > Paste > Paste Special > Unformatted Text from the menu (Word
2003) OR Home tab > Paste > Paste Special > Unformatted Text (Word 2007).
But what if you have LOTS of text to paste in as unformatted text? Well, you can set up a
macro in your template (e.g. Normal.dot) and apply a keyboard command for it. Then,
when you need to paste in a lot of text as unformatted text, you just press the keyboard
combination and it’s done.
What is a Macro?
A macro is a set of computer instructions that you can record and
associate with a shortcut key combination or a macro name. Then,
when you press the shortcut key combination or click the macro name,
your computer program carries out the instructions of the macro.
This macro is called NoFormatPaste:
Sub NoFormatPaste()
Selection.PasteSpecial DataType:=wdPasteText
End Sub
Add the macro to the Word template
To add the NoPasteFormat macro to your Word template:
1. Go to Tools > Macro > Macros (Word 2003)OR Developer tab > Macros (Word
2007).
2. In the Macro name field, type NoFormatPaste.
3. Select Normal.dot (or whatever template you want to add this macro to) from the
Macros in drop-down list.
4. Click Create.
5. Paste the Selection.PasteSpecial DataType:=wdPasteText line from the macro
above AFTER the last ‘ and BEFORE the End Sub line.
6. Close the Microsoft Visual Basic window.
Macro for pasting unformatted text
Assign a keyboard shortcut to the macro
Once you’ve added the macro to your template, you can assign a keyboard shortcut to it.
Here’s how:
1. Go to Tools > Customize (Word 2003) OR Office button
> Word Options >
Customize (Word 2007).
2. Click Keyboard (Word 2003) OR Customize (Word 2007).
3. On the Customize Keyboard dialog box, select Macros from the Categories list.
4. Select NoFormatPaste from the list of macros on the right.
5. Click in the Press new shortcut key field.
6. Press the keys you want to assign to this function (in the example, I’ve used
Alt+Z).
7. Select the document or template where you want this function to apply (in the
example, it’s the Normal.dot template).
8. Click Assign.
9. Click Close to close the Customize Keyboard dialog box.
10. Close the Customize dialog box (Word 2003) OR the Word Options dialog (Word
2007).
Assign a keyboard shortcut for the macro
Test your keyboard shortcut
1. Open a new document based on the template you selected in step 7 above.
2. Open an existing Word document with text you want to copy and paste into the
new document.
3. Copy the text from the existing document.
4. Go to the new document and press Alt+Z (or the keystroke combination you
assigned in step 6 above). The copied text should paste in as unformatted text.