Pasting Clean Text

I paste a lot of text. (I mean a LOT of text.) When I am copying and pasting text within the same document, it is no problem. When I am copying text from other places, however, pasting that text into a Word document can have strange effects. This isn't a Word problem; it is something about the text I am copying and pasting that causes funky appearance of the text.

To get around this, I normally choose Edit | Paste Special and make sure that the text I am about to paste will be added to the document as unformatted text. Of course, since I paste so much text, continually choosing Edit | Paste Special can be bothersome.

The solution, for me, was to create a very short macro that does the pasting I want—as unformatted text. The following macro, PasteClean, does just that:

Sub PasteClean()
    Selection.PasteSpecial Link:=False, _
      DataType:=wdPasteText, _
      Placement:= wdInLine, _
      DisplayAsIcon:=False
End Sub

To make this macro an even more valuable editing tool, I assigned it to a custom tool on the toolbar, or to the Quick Access toolbar in my copy of Word 2007. Now, when I want to paste a clean copy of text, I simply click the tool, and the macro does the rest.