How to Convert Rich Text to Plain Text
Paste formatted content from a Word document, Google Doc, webpage, or email client into the box above. The font styles, colors, and other hidden formatting that normally rides along when you copy and paste between applications gets left behind — what lands in the box is the plain text itself, along with the visible structure of numbered lists, bulleted lists, and tabbed indentation that were part of the original content.
What is plain text?
Plain text is text with no formatting, styling, or embedded code attached to it — just the raw characters, including Unicode like emoji, with no font information, colors, markup, or layout instructions. Common plain text file formats include .txt and .csv. It's universally compatible: any text editor, form field, or application can read it without needing to interpret hidden styling.
Why does pasting into a plain text box strip formatting?
A plain text field can only ever hold plain characters — it has nowhere to put font information, colors, or embedded styling even if the source tried to include it. That's the whole mechanism at work here: paste rich content in, and only the text itself comes through. Numbered lists, bullets, and tab indentation usually survive because most applications include their own plain-text numbers, bullet characters, and tab characters alongside the rich version when you copy — this box just doesn't discard those along with everything else.
When would I need this?
Anytime formatting is getting in the way rather than helping — pasting into a plain-text config file, a code comment, an SMS, a CMS field that renders raw HTML from pasted styling, or anywhere trailing font tags and colors would look broken or bloat the file size. It's also a quick way to check exactly what text is really inside a heavily styled document before you commit to using it somewhere else.
Related tools
- Remove Text Formatting — strip formatting from text you've already pasted elsewhere.
- Remove Line Breaks — collapse multi-line pasted text into one paragraph.
- Whitespace Remover — clean up extra spaces left over from a paste.
Last reviewed: August 2026