Please Note: This article is written for users of the following Microsoft Word versions: 2000, 2002, and 2003. If you are using a later version (Word 2007 or later), this tip may not work for you. For a version of this tip written specifically for later versions of Word, click here: Getting Rid of the Paste Options Box.

Getting Rid of the Paste Options Box

by Allen Wyatt
(last updated March 26, 2022)

If you copy and paste information from place to place in a document, you may have noticed that whenever you complete a paste operation, Word helpfully displays a "paste options" tool right next to whatever you pasted. Use this tool and you can apply some variations to what you pasted.

Some people find the paste options to be distracting in some versions of Word. (The appearance of the paste options tool is different in different versions of Word.) Fortunately for them, Word allows you to turn them off. Follow these steps:

Choose Options from the Tools menu. Word displays the Options dialog box.
Make sure the Edit tab is displayed. (See Figure 1.)

Figure 1. The Edit tab of the Options dialog box.

Clear the Show Paste Options check box.
Click OK.

WordTips is your source for cost-effective Microsoft Word training. (Microsoft Word is the most popular word processing software in the world.) This tip (3338) applies to Microsoft Word 2000, 2002, and 2003. You can find a version of this tip for the ribbon interface of Word (Word 2007 and later) here: Getting Rid of the Paste Options Box.

Author Bio

Allen Wyatt

With more than 50 non-fiction books and numerous magazine articles to his credit, Allen Wyatt is an internationally recognized author. He is president of Sharon Parq Associates, a computer and publishing services company. Learn more about Allen...

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