Shortcut in Word or Excel for Special Paste?

Question

If I want to paste without any formatting, I have to go to the "Paste" button on the ribbon and click "Paste Special" and then "unformatted text".

Is there a shortcut like Ctrl+V that'll automatically do that for me?

Answer 1

I don't think there is, but the good news is that you can make one by creating a macro.

Either record the macro, doing the paste the way you want to, then assign it to a keyboard shortcut, or put the following into a new macro (assuming you want to paste without formatting):

For MS Word 2010:

    Selection.PasteAndFormat (wdFormatPlainText)

For MS Excel 2010:

ActiveSheet.PasteSpecial Format:="Unicode Text", Link:=False, _
    DisplayAsIcon:=False, NoHTMLFormatting:=True

Again, once you've saved the Macro, you'll need to assign it to a keyboard shortcut (eg ctrl + m).

Answer 2

In Word 2010 you can right click and from the paste options select "Keep Text Only" - not quite as good as a keyboard shortcut but not bad.

Answer 3

On Word 2007 on Windows, you can use Ctrl+Alt+V.

On Word 2011 for Mac, you can use Control+Command+V.

Both of these will bring up the "Paste Special" dialog. There's no shortcut directly for "Unformatted Text", but since you can use arrows to go to "Unformatted Text" and Enter to confirm, this is probably the fastest way without a macro.

Answer 4

If you want to set "Keep Text Only" as your default, you can do the following:

1. The default paste:

2. Click the dropdown at the top and choose "More Commands":

3. Click Advanced:

4. Change the defaults (to Keep Text Only):

5. Repeating the same paste defaults to text only:

Hope this helps!

Answer 5

There's actually an easy way. Just press Alt+E, then S and V. You will get the dialog box much easier, that will certainly save you lots of time.