Non-Microsoft Text Paste Avoids Freezing, Stealth Uglification

For Microsoft (MS) Windows users who work with text, two very basic operations are bug-ridden:

1. Copying text from a webpage to MS Word;

2. Copying text from MS Word to MS's widely used email application, Outlook Express.

Copying from a webpage to Word is important in many situations. Word, with its outlining features, is an excellent way to organize information, so when researching a topic, for example, it's natural to want to copy text to Word from a webpage displayed in Internet Explorer (the MS web browser).

Copying from Word to Outlook Express is important for users wanting to use Word to compose an email message -- either for its more advanced word processing capabilities, or for convenience in including text from pre-existing Word documents.

Unfortunately, both these seemingly simple operations are beset by Microsoft bugs.

Copying from a webpage to Word is liable to make Word freeze for a prolonged period of time as MS software agonizes over the conversion from webpage format to Word format.

Copying from Word to an Outlook Express plaintext message composition window arouses bugs that have been known about for years. Despite being "plaintext," the window retains unwanted text formatting information. The formatting is, moreover, retained invisibly. The text appears as desired -- but at the instant of SEND, when it is too late for the user to do anything about it, Outlook Express distorts and uglifies the text. Typically, the distortion involves a tripling of the blank lines separating paragraphs, so consecutive paragraphs are separated by 3 blank lines instead of one. (The user can see the distorted message the recipient will receive by examining it in his "Sent" folder.)

This bug has survived years of software updates from Microsoft and persists in the current version of Outlook Express.

Before discovering smart-paste (described below), my fingers had become quite agile in making rapid detours to the format-free oasis of Notepad for the purpose of delousing text. To copy from Word to Outlook Express, for example, I would routinely:

1. select all (in Word)
2. copy to clipboard
3. switch to Notepad
4. paste
5. select all
6. copy to clipboard
7. switch to Outlook Express
8. paste

But now, smart-paste has changed this routine to:

1. select all (in Word)
2. copy to clipboard
3. switch to Outlook Express
4. smart-paste

I'm still trying to get used to it.

To top it off, smart-paste gives you a nice confirmation sound effect.

The smart-paste keystroke is Windows-V by default.

Smart-paste works by removing format information from the Windows clipboard's contents, then doing a normal paste. Smart-paste's real name is PureText. It is available for free at http://www.stevemiller.net/puretext/, and was recommended to me on the microsoft.public.windows.inetexplorer.ie6_outlookexpress newsgroup.

"Smart-paste" is my word, not stevemiller's. In a simpler world, formatted text would be smart and 1960's-style ASCII text would be dumb. But with buggy software, less is more, and smart becomes dumber.

I have only one tiny quibble which is really just academic since it makes no practical difference to me. It'd be a bit smarter if the smart-paste operation left the clipboard unchanged, rather than stripping its contents of formatting.

• I'm in no way affiliated with stevemiller.net; I'm just a grateful user.

• Freezing and stealth uglification occur at least with Windows XP / Word 2000 / Outlook Express 6; probably other versions too.

• After writing the above, I came across http://www.ajsystems.com/qt4.html, a set of tools which includes one coincidentally named "Smart Paste" which purports to perform the same "smart paste" described here. I haven't tried it, and the webpage doesn't indicate whether "Smart Paste" can be invoked via keyboard (rather than the rodent).