About

I'm Mike Pope. I live in Seattle. I was a technical writer and editor for over 40 years, now retired. I'm interested in language, software, writing, editing, music, movies, books, travel, cats.

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A person almost always burnishes his reputation by shutting up: I learned that as a boy.

— Garrison Keillor



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Blog Statistics

Dates
First entry - 6/27/2003
Most recent entry - 6/27/2026

Totals
Posts - 2685
Comments - 2702
Hits - 2,830,487

Averages
Entries/day - 0.32
Comments/entry - 1.01
Hits/day - 336

Updated every 30 minutes. Last: 12:16 AM Pacific


  02:35 PM

Another quick post about Word, primarily for my own benefit (when I forget this later).

Word has several options for how you can paste text:


They are (in order):
  • Keep Source Formatting. This option keeps the original formatting (both character and paragraph formatting), but converts it to direct formatting.

  • Merge Formatting. This option copies basic character formatting (bold, italics, underline) as direct formatting, but does not copy any paragraph formatting.

  • Use Destination Styles. This option copies the text and applies styles that are in the target document. (This option appears only if there matching styles in the target doc.)

  • Keep Text Only. This option copies the text as plain text, with no formatting.
I need the last one (paste plain text) more often than any of the others, so I want it on a keyboard shortcut. You can do this by recording a macro of yourself using the Keep Text Only option. But I realized there's an even easier way—just assign a keyboard shortcut to the built-in PasteTextOnly command.

I keep forgetting that most anything Word can do has a command. If a gesture requires just one command, you can assign a keyboard shortcut directly to it. Maybe writing this out will help me remember.

Update I added a video!


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