General Category > Microsoft Notepad - Tips and tricks

Extracting text from Tables

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ideasguy:
Have you ever tried copying information fropm a web page on the net into a Word document only to find youve captured the text in tabular format?
Heres an example:
Open WORD
Now visit:
http://www.ideasforgardens.net/
SELECT
Right click on the page
Click Select All
COPY
Do a Ctrl-C (Click and hold the Ctrl button on your keyboard and type c)
That copies the selected text

Now go back to word
PASTE
Click into the blank document and Do a Ctrl-V (Click and hold the Ctrl button on your keyboard and type V)

Note that you get the text, but all formatted inside a table.

What if all you wanted was the text?
No problem. Do this:

Do the SELECT and COPY above.
Open Notepad
PASTE into the notepad text region

Note that you only get TEXT, no table formatting.
Now SELECT and COPY from the Notepad doc and PASTE it into the WORD document.
Result: Text only

I showed this to my grandson a couple of years ago when I was "the expert". He was copying info for a school project.
I thought he wasnt paying much attention and was happy enough just to get the copy into his page.
A few days later, I saw him repeating the process himself. I was so impressed. He HAD been paying attention, and had added that little trick to the many more he has now acquired!
Now, of course, he's a couple of years older and HE'S the Expert!

Pensioner:
I thought I'd revive this one as it has sat here for a long time...

You can still use Word to do this but instead of using a simple Paste command use Paste Special.  You are presented with varioius options but selecting  Unformatted Text gives the desired result in the same way as Notepad does.  Then you can re-format it to your wishes which you cannot do in Notepad!

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