To avoid that interference, press and release the CTRL key and then press T. In some cases these shortcuts may interfere with existing shortcuts. Notice that it has a keyboard shortcut as well… Keep Text Only ( T ). Instead of you going to paste special, Paste Special came to you! Now choose the Keep Text Only option. That will bring up the same set of Paste Special options. After doing a regular paste, if you are not happy with the way paste happened, just press and release the Ctrl key. It knows about what you will want, and it has all those options ready and waiting for you. Most users do not like that icon – it is irritating and stubborn. Just notice the afterthought menu – that irritating icon with (Ctrl) written on it. This is NOT an efficient approach.Įven if you performed a default paste by mistake, relax. We will then go to Paste Special to choose the text only option. At that point we realize our mistake and press CTRL Z to undo that action. Sometimes, we just do a regular paste (Ctrl V) because we are so used to it. The methods described above allow you to choose the Text format BEFORE the pasting action is invoked. Now the Paste and Keep Text Only button will get Alt 3 as the keyboard shortcut. For example, by default QAT has only two buttons – Undo and Back. The number will depend upon how many existing buttons were already there in your QAT. Just press and release Alt key to see the number for each button. Once you add any button to QAT, it automatically gets a number assigned. Of course, a similar option is available in all Office products. Now you have one-click access to Paste Special as plain text. Keep Text Only is NOT a popular command! Choose All Commands from the dropdown, look for the Paste and Keep Text Only command and add it to QAT. The right side list shows buttons that are already inside QAT and the left one shows Popular Commands. Right click on the existing QAT (Quick Access Toolbar) or anywhere on the ribbon and choose Customize Quick Access Toolbar. Keyboard shortcut: Alt and button numberĪdd Paste as Text to Quick Access Toolbar.Add Paste as Text to Quick Access Toolbar.

Paste link in excel 2016