what you need to know
- Microsoft Word will soon support pasting plain text with a keyboard shortcut.
- The functionality has been available in Microsoft Teams, Microsoft Word for the web, and various other apps for quite some time.
- Support for the new keyboard shortcut is now available to Microsoft 365 Insiders in the Beta channel.
Microsoft Word will soon support the “Paste Text Only” option via a keyboard shortcut. The word processor will allow users to paste text without any formatting using Control + Change + V in Windows or the Command + Change + V on Mac. That key combination already pastes plain text into Microsoft Teams, Word for the web, Gmail, and a few other apps. Now it’s coming to the desktop versions of Word.
The Plain Text Only shortcut is now available to Microsoft 365 Home and Microsoft 365 Business Standard Insiders who are running Windows version 16.0.15831.20174 or later or Mac version 16.67.1113.0 or later. As a reminder, the Office Insider program was renamed the Microsoft 365 Insider program earlier this year.
Microsoft announced the feature in an Insider Office blog post. (opens in a new tab). There, the company outlines the steps to use the shortcut:
- Select a range of text from your current document, or another document, or
- In your Word document, place the cursor where you want the text to appear.
- Press Control + Change + V (Command + Change + V on Mac). Notice how the pasted content matches the formatting of the neighboring text, instead of preserving its font size, color, etc. originals.
You can adjust what happens when you paste plain text, such as keeping the bullets when you use the Keep Text Only option. This can be done through the Advanced section of Word Options.
Microsoft Word on Windows and Mac already supported pasting plain text, but it’s now easier to do.
Microsoft also announced the following changes to shortcuts:
| Characteristic | New Shortcut (Windows) | New Shortcut (Mac) |
|---|---|---|
| Paste text only | Ctrl + Shift + V | Cmd + Shift + V |
| copy format painter | Ctrl+Alt+C | Cmd + Option + C |
| Copy paste format | Ctrl+Alt+V | Command + Option + V |
| special paste | Alt + H + V + S | None |
| copyright symbol | ( + C + ) or Insert > Symbol Ω > © | ( + C + ) or Insert > Symbol Ω > © |
If you don’t like the new keyboard shortcuts, you can go back to the old settings. Microsoft has a support document (opens in a new tab) to guide you through that process.
If you like to paste plain text, you can do it anywhere in Windows. A recent update to PowerToys added the option to paste plain text into any app. That has the advantage of working anywhere, but the downside is that using that utility replaces any copied text with reformatted text inside the clipboard. That means you can’t paste formatted text in some documents and plain text in others.
