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(Similar to my earlier question about Windows XP and darren_n's follow-up for Mac OS X.)

I regularly copy and paste text between spreadsheets, emails, browser windows, etc. I can't think of a single time when I've wanted to keep the formatting from the source text.

I already know about the following workarounds:

  • In OpenOffice, click “Edit” → “Paste Special” or press Ctrl+Shift+V, then click “Unformatted Text”
  • Paste to Text Editor and copy from there

What I want is to tell Ubuntu to just do this by default.

Is this possible?

Scott - Слава Україні
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Nathan Long
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  • You'd have to modify the way the clipboard works, *or* the copying functionality of every application ever. Have you tried any alternative clipboard managers? – l0b0 Mar 05 '12 at 11:17

4 Answers4

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In Ubuntu 11.04 and higher I can use Ctrl-Shift-V to paste plain text.

Martin Konecny
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  • This works in 12.04 as well. – Corey Mar 12 '13 at 22:15
  • do you know if/where we can customize this shortcut? – chrismarx Apr 04 '14 at 18:28
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    My Ubuntu is 16.04.2 LTS with KDE and your solution does not work. Maybe there's been some changes over the years, but frankly I think the solution might be specific to your desktop environment and/or clipboard manager. What were they? My bet is there's no universal solution for all of them. – Kamil Maciorowski May 23 '17 at 19:43
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You should use the select - middleclick action, which on Unix only copies text (and this is cited as a drawback when promoting real copy-paste of rich objects).

What happens (I'm guessing a bit, but I'm fairly sure I'm right) is that OpenOffice recognizes characters in a similar fashion to Markdown (actually, the other way round: OO came first), and formats them.

For example, in OO, if you start typing "* text" and press Enter, you start an unordered bulleted list. Typing - text gets you a bulleted list starting with emdash. 1. text starts an ordered list. All automatically.

So what I mean is that this is not an Ubuntu problem, but the Office Suite trying to DWYM. Which, really, seems the best course here. If I copied your question into OO, I'd prefer the formatting to remain, otherwise I'd copy it into e.g. Vim.

Finally, there are some helpful tips here (basically, add a macro that does what you want, assign it to a key combination of your choice). This should work no matter the OS.

Adriano Varoli Piazza
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1

Personnally I use an intermediate editor window (nedit) that would'nt support formatting. That's far from ideal though.

wazoox
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0

Select your text with the mouse (highlight it), then middle click where you want to paste

Yoann Le Touche
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  • I just tried that - copied from this question to OpenOffice. It pasted formatted text. – Nathan Long Jul 24 '09 at 11:59
  • You're confusing things. Openoffice decides to paste the text formatted. What you highlight gets copied as plain text, always. The question is not about the OS, but about the OpenOffice suite. – Adriano Varoli Piazza Jul 24 '09 at 12:02
  • Remember, there is no such thing as plain text. http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/Unicode.html – Stefan Thyberg Jul 24 '09 at 12:05
  • @Adriano - I AM confused. If the text were copied as plain text into memory, the formatting would have been removed before OpenOffice ever saw it, right? – Nathan Long Jul 24 '09 at 12:11
  • @Stefan - specifically, I want the pasted text to share the formatting of the destination text, not the source text. – Nathan Long Jul 24 '09 at 12:13
  • In most word processing and office software there is a special paste function that can paste text without any formatting. – Stefan Thyberg Jul 24 '09 at 12:37
  • Word, for example, has a "Paste Special..." function right next to Paste in the menu. – Stefan Thyberg Jul 24 '09 at 12:37
  • @Stefan - yes, I know there is a special paste function. I listed that in my known workarounds when I asked the question. What I want is to change the default so that I don't have to specify each time that I don't want the formatting. I never want the formatting. It feels like saying "give me a hamburger, and leave out the chocolate sauce." If I wanted chocolate sauce, I would say so. Leaving it out should be the default. Or at least let me SET that as the default. Don't make me say "hold the chocolate sauce" every time I order. – Nathan Long Jul 24 '09 at 15:04
  • @Nathan: your analogy is faulty. You don't want formatting, but I'm not sure that most people copying text to a rich text Office program share your view. It's not so much 'hold the chocolate sauce' as 'hold the ketchup on those fries' (I really don't like ketchup) – Adriano Varoli Piazza Jul 27 '09 at 12:15