How To Remove Formatting In Google Docs

Google Docs, Google's online competitor to such programs as Microsoft Discussion and Apple tree's Pages, is a powerful tool for creating documents and collaborating with other people on changes. With information technology, you tin cooperatively edit give-and-take-processing files right in your browser!
Ane of my favorite built-in features of Docs, though, is its power to clear formatting from text, and so if you go dorsum and realize that a quote y'all pasted has a bunch of bolded words, you lot could strip that right out without having to re-type the content. Here's how it works! Note that I'm using macOS in my screenshots only the basic steps piece of work on any other platform that tin access Docs.

Articulate Formatting in Google Docs

To get started, open or create a new document in Google Docs and paste in some text from an outside source. This can be from Apple tree Mail, a webpage, or pretty much whatever application. For the copy and paste actions, you can use either keyboard shortcuts (Control-C to re-create and Command-5 to paste in macOS).

Now, in many cases, the text you pasted will have its original source formatting. This means that the pasted text won't match your certificate's default font formatting, nor volition information technology match the formatting of other pasted text blocks if they're from different sources.

There may exist some cases where yous want to preserve the original source formatting, and you lot don't care virtually having inconsistent fonts, sizes, and styles in your document. In nigh cases, however, you probably desire to avoid this and keep things compatible.
One solution to this is to use thePaste without formatting pick, found in theEdit carte in Google Docs, or past using the keyboard shortcutControl-Shift-V (orControl-Shift-V for other operating systems).

This takes the text that's in your clipboard and pastes only the evidently text without any formatting.

Annotation that this card detail doesn't appear in all browsers; "Paste without formatting" is missing in Docs within Safari, for instance, simply its shortcut, Option-Shift-Control-V, still works and does the same affair. (In Chrome on the Mac, that shortcut is listed instead asCommand-Shift-V, but Option-Command-Shift-V volition work too if you like the ease of merely having to remember one shortcut.)
The Paste without formatting command is fine when you're pasting new text into your certificate. Merely what if you lot already have an existing document full of text, and you want to remove all of the inconsistent formatting?

How to Clear All Formatting in Google Docs

The solution hither is to employ theClear formatting selection, located in theFormat > Clear formatting menu item or its shortcut. You tin can as well use the Articulate formatting shortcut, which is Command-Backslash. Simply select a portion, or all, of your existing document, and use either the card option or keyboard shortcut.

All of the formatting of your selected text will be immediately removed, and you'll be left with text that matches the default Google Docs text.

Now, there are a couple of differences to consider here. When yous use "Paste without formatting," Docs will strip out all of the links and images and then on, equally I mentioned. Plus, it volition friction match the pasted content with whatever font you'd used in the surrounding text, so if you had switched from Arial to Comic Sans (yuck), for example, your pasted-in text would match that style. "Clear formatting" doesn't do that, though; information technology will strip the text of its font, sure, but it won't necessarily force it to lucifer what's around information technology. Also, information technology won't remove links or images, so if that'southward what you wanna do, plan ahead! Or get back and re-copy your text and drop it back in using Edit > Paste without formatting. Merely in whatsoever case, exist sure that you properly attribute your quote and that you accept permission to use it! That's my CYA tip for the mean solar day, folks.

Source: https://www.alphr.com/clear-formatting-google-docs/#:~:text=The%20solution%20here%20is%20to,menu%20option%20or%20keyboard%20shortcut.

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