Absolutely Getting Rid of Formatting

Thank you. So. Much.

Thank you!!!

Your "How to get rid of formatting" helped save a document taken over by some kind of demons in the night, who stacked all the characters over to the left margin to render it illegible! :{

After Ctrl Pasting it into Notebook, and Ctrl Pasting it into a new document that used the Heading 1 on Home ribbon option, it worked. (Whereas the Normal option did more of the same craziness!)

I then reduced font size etc. to get it similar to original.

Thanks again.

Anne
and
mary
and
Peter
want
to
go
to
the
pictures

this is an example of text I took from the internet except that here were over 200 lines,each read as a new paragraph i have tried above but it still remains a new line for every word. I am working on word 2013. I have used find and replace paragraph mark which works but does not clear all formatting.

Hi, Allen. I want to thank you for this solution. I manage public FB pages, and when I curate quotes from websites and paste them into a Word doc, they retain the link to the site. Your strategy was the only way I've found to remove it. You saved me a lot of time and I wanted to take the time to tell you how much I appreciate it.
All My Best,
MRG

Good explanation. This also works for WordPad.

Now can all of these steps be put into a macro?

I have Word 2003.
Highlight the text, click on the double A/A symbol - Extreme left on formatting line.
Click on 'Clear Formatting' in the Styles and Formatting box that appears.
Job done.

Suggestion: revise the tip again for the benefit of dummies:

Allen Wyatt says: a quick and easy way to get rid of any and all formatting for a selection of text, here is a quick way to do it (and then gave this):

Absolutely Getting Rid of Formatting by Allen Wyatt (last updated July 9, 2014) allen@sharonparq.com, wtanswers@tips.net
http://word.tips.net/T000167_Absolutely_Getting_Rid_of_Formatting.html?awt_l=BqCss&awt_m=IitTX2jqSQPx4X
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But questions remained: Where do I find “Clipboard”? And once I find that, where do I find “Notepad” accessory?

It took some experimenting, but at last I found a way to get rid of formatting. Allen's directions were not elementary enough... Here are the steps he assumed that we dummies already knew:

In the document, go to “Edit” in the tool bar at top of screen and hit “select all”; or else, use Ctrl-A. Otherwise, use click-and-drag to highlight the part you want, then “copy”(Ctrl-C).
Click on “Start” on the lower left corner of the screen. Then click on “All Programs”, “Accessories”, “Notepad”, and then paste (Ctrl-V) into the Notepad.
Once your text is there, you can copy it again (Ctrl-C), and paste it (Ctrl-V) into the Word document that you are working with, without the shading or other formatting.