Remove Text Formatting With Plain Clip
I believe most of us have the same gripe about copying text and pasting it onto another application but not wanting the formatting to be pasted as well.
There are many ways to strip text of it’s formatting, eg. pasting text into Text Edit, selecting “Make Plain Text” from the top menu, copy the text and pasting it into your desired application. Or pasting the formatted text into your browser’s address bar, select all and copy the text again before pasting the text into your desired application.
All these takes a number of steps and all these time adds up to cause annoyance, here’s an easier way to strip text formatting, meet Plain Clip (Free).
Faceless Application
Plain Clip is a faceless application, meaning there is no user interface, you install it on your Mac, the next time you copy a formatted text, you only need to launch this program to remove it’s formatting. What happens behind the background is that when Plain Clip launches, it strips the currently copied text on the clipboard of it’s formatting and closes itself. So that you can paste the currently copied text in it’s unformatted glory.
If you’re using an application launcher program like QuickSilver or LaunchBar, the process of stripping formatted text is even faster.
Using TextExpander with Plain Clip
But here’s the quickest way. This will require to be a proud owner of TextExpander ($29.95). For those of you who have no idea what TextExpander is, it’s a Mac app that expands your pre-defined text snippets, images or both by typing an abbreviation. More info about TextExpander in this post.
Here’s what you need to do:
- Create a new snippet
- Paste this into the snippet field: do shell script “‘/Applications/Plain Clip.app/pc’ -v”
- Select “Applescript” as the content:
- Assign an abbreviation to your snippet, eg. ;pc (pc is for Plain Clip, so it’s easy to remember, you can use your own abbreviation of course)
The next time you need to copy a chunk of formatted text, type “;pc” and voila! You pasted text will be unformatted. The fastest way to un-format and paste text at the same time. :)
Have fun!
ABOUT THIS AUTHOR
Note: you can paste text system-wide using Command-Shift-Option-V and it will drop the copied formatting and take on the formatting of where you are pasting it.
I downloaded Plain Clip today; excited to use it. I’m trying to configure it with Text Expander, but it didn’t work on my initial test. Would you take a quick look at the screenshot (link) and see if I did it correctly?
Your directions said to set it for AppleScript, but this was before Text Expander had Shell Script available. When I first tried AppleScript as the source type, it just substituted my text with the full string of the command. When I switched to Shell Script, it beeps when I get to the t in my ;pt …and it doesn’t type the t at first…I have to hit the button a second time.
So, something isn’t right…probably an easy fix since I’m not all that familiar with script commands.
http://img.skitch.com/20091120-mcqpcxdpx47wu2kp622h9uspyp.jpg
Thanks for taking a look,
Ed
Edward: Try re-typing both ” ‘ in your script. When you copy the text from this post, the snippet is copied as formatted text.
I’ve been having a problem with the TextExpander implementation. When I follow the instructions above and type “;pc” the copied text replaces only the “c” with the text. For example, if I copy “Don’t eat my Jello.” then type “;pc”, the text appears as follows: “;pDon’t eat my Jello.”
Ideas?
At first I had the same issue as Edward. When I use your command:
do shell script “‘/Applications/Plain Clip.app/pc’ -v”
It either outputs the entire line above instead of what’s on my clipboard, or makes an audible error sound.
I’ve tried to “Remove the text formatting” from my clipboard when pasting your original string into TextExpander but I finally got it to work by typing the entire thing from scratch. (go figure)
Now I’m having the issue Cnlan described. It’s putting the first two characters of my text string command from TextExpander before my clipboard text. I’m a new TextExpander user so I’m not sure if this is an issue with the way the “do shell script” command works, or a bug with TE itself?
Any suggestions?
PS. I’ve tried to change the abbreviation for TE to over a dozen different combinations and the same thing happens each time. I’m using TextExpander V2.8.1 because I’m not on Snow Leopard yet.