Grabbing Text from the Net

Of late, I have had occasion to explain to several people how to grab text from the Internet and copy it to a document. The problem is that if you just paste the text you get lots of hidden html formatting, which can make cleaning up the text difficult. Here's how you eliminate the hidden html formatting.

1. Copy the text you want from an Internet page. The text you copy will include hidden html formatting.
2. Open a document (Word or WordPad).
3. Locate the Paste tool. In Word and WordPad (2007 or 2010), the Paste tool is the first button on the Home tab.
4. Click the Paste tool; that is, the bottom part of the button with the word Paste. A small drop-down menu appears.
5. Select Paste special. The Paste Special dialog box appears.
6. Select Unformatted Text, and then click OK. The text appears without any html formatting. You can then clean up the unformatted text, which is remarkably easier than cleaning up text that is littered with html formatting.