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No matter what I set the default paste options to in Word 2013, text always pastes with source formatting. I've tried fiddling with everything on that section of the options pane including "smart cut and paste" but nothing seems to make any difference at all.

Has anyone else experienced this? is there something stupid I missed? I'm using 64 bit office BTW but not sure if that makes any difference.

just to be clear, here's exactly what I'm doing.

  • click home tab
  • click triangle underneath paste button
  • click 'set default paste'
  • next to "pasting from other programs" select "keep text only"
  • click OK
  • go to chrome browser window, select some text, press control-c
  • return to Word window, paste control-v
  • text is pasted with the formatting from chrome, not as plain text.

Note that if I click the small triangle under the paste button and then click the icon to keep text only, it does what I would expect.

Also I'm using office 64 bit which I know is not common so it may be that this is a bug that only appears in the 64 bit version.

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  • Works for me, at least when testing copying from other programs: setting default paste to “Keep text only” causes Ctrl+V to do that when copying from a web page, as opposite to default of keeping the formatting. Note that there are several settings, applying to different cases of using copy and paste. It might help if you explained one of the cases you observed: which setting did you set and how, and which operation you performed, and how it failed.
    – Jukka K. Korpela
    Commented Jun 17, 2014 at 12:09
  • I use the work-round of copying to Notepad and cutting/pasting from there. Guaranteed to remove formatting from anything, including web browsers, PDFs, etc.
    – AFH
    Commented Jun 17, 2014 at 12:12
  • 2
    I use the notepad workaround a lot too. Also, if it's only one line of text, I find it's more convenient to press windows-R and use the "run" text box to paste and re-cut :-)
    – Andy
    Commented Jun 17, 2014 at 13:35
  • since I reinstalled my PC (with the same version of office) this seems to have been working for me. I never got to the bottom of why it wasn't.
    – Andy
    Commented Jul 14, 2015 at 7:55

2 Answers 2

Reset to default
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In order to get the default paste options to work on my computer, I had to check the box that says "Show Paste Options button when content is pasted." This check box is located in the same area as the default paste options.

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  • This solution worked for me too.
    – peacetype
    Commented Mar 28, 2016 at 22:30
  • big app - more places to bug
    – Arthur
    Commented Jun 14, 2017 at 10:39
  • That's a big relief! Thank you for sharing this!
    – Mugen
    Commented May 17, 2020 at 12:46
  • Worked for me as well. Thank you for sharing the trick! Do you have an idea about why the option affects default paste behaviour?
    – Andrey Kazak
    Commented Apr 22, 2023 at 12:39
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In case I'm not the only one still having this problem - I found that the "Show Paste Options" option made no difference for me, but I get my default paste selection if I turn off "Use smart cut and paste" in the Advanced Options.

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