"Paste special" to copy content from the Internet

If you are copying text from the Internet -- say, a news story for use in class (see Links, right, for sources) -- you will often find that when you paste the text into Word you get unwanted formatting, largely in the form of tables.

Copying from a webpage will do that -- pick up the tables that have been used to lay out the page.

Avoiding that, and getting just the text that you want, is very simple -- and will be much quicker than trying to eliminate all those table cells.


Copy the text, go to your Word document, and -- from the menu, not the icon -- choose "Paste special" (see image, above).


Then choose "unformatted text" (see second image, above). And it's as simple as that...

To try it, go to Yahoo News, for example, copy a story, and then try both methods: paste with the icon, and then -- in a new document -- use "paste special".

See the difference...?