Create documents with plain text formatting in Google Docs

Question

How do I make documents in Google Docs with plain text format?

Sometimes I make changes to text pages on my site and upload them to the website. The files are PHP and I prepare the pages in TextWrangler. I don't type documents in TextWrangler but use TextEdit instead. I ensure they are in plain text format, so that there's no formatting or extraneous stuff, and then I copy-paste into TextWrangler.

I'd like to try using Google Docs instead of TextEdit and copy-paste text from Google Docs directly into TextWrangler.

There's a menu item 'Clear formatting' in Google Docs, and this clears things like font choices and font sizes. But links remain links, and I'm not sure that it's as basic a format as 'Plain' text created in TextEdit.

Is it possible to make text "Plain" in Google Docs?

Answer 1

It sounds much faster to just copy to notepad, then paste back in.

Answer 2

If you are using Chrome, you can use the keyboard shortcut Ctrl + Shift + V to paste the unformatted version of the copied text into Google Docs (or any other web page).

Answer 3

Presuming you're on Windows, there's a program called Puretext that clears formatting from whatever you have cached in the clipboard.