PureText: Strip formatting without using Notepad

Until recently I’ve almost always had an instance of Notepad open in order to strip formatting when I’m copying text from one application to the other.

With PureText this is no longer required. Once the app is installed (assuming the default settings) you can paste the contents of the clipboard and strip the formatting simply by pressing the windows key+v (as opposed the the usual ctrl+v).

Installing PureText

Unfortunately PureText doesn’t have an install wizard. Once you’ve downloaded the application, extract and copy it to a location of your choosing (eg. program files\puretext\) and create a shortcut to it.

Configuring PureText

Once you execute the file you just created a shortcut to, an icon will appear in your system tray:

Right click and select ‘Options’. You will be presented with the following dialogue box, where you can choose the hot-key you wish to paste with and (quite importantly) tell PureText to launch every time you start windows.

PureText is now ready to use.

Habits

The trickiest thing about PureText is getting into the habit of using it when you want to strip formatting from the clipboard. I’m so use to ctrl+c, ctrl+v that its hard to get use to anything else.

This app is a great example though of dropping steps from a process. No more copy n paste into Notepad! :-)

Hat tip to HowToGeek. That’s how I found out about it.

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