Brain Candy Inc

In our complex, digital world most people have had experience with copying text, bulleted lists, graphics and the like between locations. For example, you want to copy information from an article you found on a website to an email you are drafting. Oftentimes, the information you bring over ends up looking nothing like it did in the original location and you spend your precious time trying to remove the formatting or reformatting it to look like you want.

Fortunately, there is a very simple program on virtually every computer or laptop; it comes with the Window (or Mac) operating system and it’s called the Notepad (for Mac, it’s called TextEdit). While you might know other ways to remove formatting – and I’m sure they are all useful – this is a helpful tool because it is fail proof, easy and every operating system has a built-in text editor. Text editors are very simple programs and only deal with text (letters, numbers and some characters). Text editors do not have formatting capabilities (no font, alignments, line spacing, etc). So, when you copy a selection into a text editor, all of the formatting is removed automatically and you are left with only the text!

1. To start this process you will need to open the Notepad. The Notepad can be found by clicking the Start menu, then Accessories.
2. Next, locate the text that you would like to copy – open the file, go to the webpage, etc.
3. Select the desired text
4. Press CTRL+C – this places the selection on the Clipboard
5. Next, click into the text editor and press CTRL+V – you will see the text but no formatting

Now repeat the process from the text editor to your final location:

1. Select the desired text curretnly in the Notepad
2. Press CTRL+C – this places the selection on the Clipboard
3. Next, click into the final destination document at the location the text should appear and press CTRL+V – you will see the text but no formatting.

Done!