Pasting Plain Text with TextExpander
David Sparks explains how he pastes plain text with the help of TextExpander:
I just invoke the clipboard formatted as plaint text. My snippet is xpt (X-Plain-Text). This works everywhere on the Mac. (Even Microsoft Word.)
I use the same snippet with a different abbreviation: ‘,,clip’ instead of ‘xpt.’[1]
This is probably my most-used TextExpander snippet. I rarely do a simple ⌘-C, ⌘-V when I’m working with text—you just never know what you’re going to get.
When working on the Sunday worship guide for 2 Pillars Church, for example, it’s not uncommon for me to use bits of text from a number of different sources. One person might send me text in the body of an email while another uses a Word document. I might also use text copied from our website or pull in our various liturgy elements from Planning Center Online. This snippet gives me a clean formatting slate to work with regardless of the source of the text.
If you work with formatted text, then you should give this a try. Not ready to invest in TextExpander?[2] There are a number of apps and clipboard managers that offer similar plain text pasting features.
I’ve thought about shortening the abbreviation, but my muscle memory is too deeply ingrained at this point. ↩
The $35 price tag might seem steep, but I can’t recommend this application enough. Well worth the price. ↩