About This Tool

The Text Format Remover is a free utility that helps you clean up text copied from various sources like Microsoft Word, web pages, emails, and PDFs. It strips away hidden formatting while preserving the actual text content.

What It Removes

• HTML Tags: Strips all HTML elements (<p>, <div>, <span>, etc.) leaving only the text content
• Smart Quotes: Converts curly/fancy quotes ("") to straight quotes ("")
• Special Dashes: Converts em dashes, en dashes, and other special dashes to regular hyphens
• Extra Whitespace: Removes multiple consecutive spaces, tabs, and unnecessary blank lines
• Special Characters: Optionally removes non-standard characters and symbols

Common Use Cases

• Cleaning up text copied from Microsoft Word before pasting into a web form
• Removing HTML from content copied from websites
• Preparing text for code editors or plain text formats
• Converting smart punctuation for compatibility with older systems
• Removing invisible formatting characters that cause display issues

Tips

• Use the "Preserve line breaks" option to maintain paragraph structure
• The "Trim whitespace from lines" option removes leading/trailing spaces from each line
• All processing happens in your browser - your text is never sent to any server