Something that bugged me for a long time on a Mac was the copy/paste behavior. I always wanted it to default to match the formatting of the document I am working in, or even paste in unformatted text. Pasting formatted text just messes up your whole document. I never knew how to do this until I recently saw a tweet about it. As I received a question about it today I figured I would write a short blog as the original post on this topic is difficult to find. I do want to point out that all credits for this trick go to user “BAT”, and of course thanks to Rob Nolen for tweeting this!
So how do you “change” the default “paste” option? Well, you don’t really, but you can configure a shortcut and set it to call a menu item. You do this as follows:
- Open System Preferences
- Go to Keyboard
- Click Shortcuts
- Add an “App Shortcut”
- Select “Microsoft Word” as the app
- Use the following as the “Menu Title”: Paste and Match Formatting
- And in the keyboard shortcut use the key combination COMMAND-V
Now you have created a shortcut that maps to the “paste and match formatting” menu item. Which is very very handy! Thanks Rob and BAT for sharing this, you saved me from a lot of frustration.
Nice to know. I did not know about app-specific shortcuts. But there is a keyboard shortcut already, shift-opt-cmd-V which does the trick. I know it is quite complex to perform, I usually do it two handed: left pinky hits shift, thumb holds both opt and cmd and right forefinger hits V. It should be supported on every program.
My word version is 16.16 and this has been supported in at least several last versions.
Yeah, I tried that for a while, but I am so used to pressing command+V that I could not get used to that combo.
the command+V already maps to default paste
when I tried command+V, it uses paste instead of paste and match formatting
cleared it now. perhaps was a typo. when this is done, the command+V is remapped.
awesome thanks!
yes you need to type the menu name “by the letter”, so exactly as is in the menu, other wise it will not work.
wow.. this is awesome….thanks much…
Fantastic. Thnakyou so much for sharing this. You are awesome. Credits to also those who helped you know this Similarly, i need a shortcut for maximizing. How do I do that?
You can do the same to maximize an app by adding a shortcut with the name “Zoom” for “All Apps” and your shortcut key. I use Shift+Command+Z
THANK YOU! This has been driving me crazy! So glad to be able to simplify the process of pasting and matching the destination formatting.
THANK YOU!!!!
You have just saved me countless hours of time and made the legal system more efficient! I’m a lawyer who copies and pastes passages from cases into briefs, and now I’ll be much faster at it.
(Irony: as a person who charges by the hour, the more efficient I am, the less I charge! But that’s okay.)
There is “Customize Keyboard” option in the “Tools” drop-down menu in MS Word. This rewiring of keyboard shortcuts can be done from there as well.
Ankit, you save me nerves!!! Thank you very much! It is the best option that I needed 🙂
Life changing. Thank you SO much for this, it’s been driving me mad.
thank you sooo much dear person :”DDD
Nicw woek, this was bugging me for ages.
Oeps: I mean Nice Work!