I wish I had an old version of Word to check this. I've been customizing Word for 25+ years, and until now, not noticed "PasteTextOnly." I've always used VBA to achieve this. I don't think I've updated this code in decades:


I wouldn't be surprised to find out that the "PasteTextOnly" command was added relatively recently. I think I would have spotted it in Word 2007 and 2010. I spent significant amounts of time messing with both.

PasteTextOnly is there in Word 2010 for keyboard shortcuts.

Thanks for checking, Charles.

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Stefan Blom
Microsoft Word MVP

I asked a colleague, who uses Word 2003, to check the list of commands. He reports no "PasteTextOnly". So it's not a legacy command.

If the command was absent in Word 2003, but available in Word 2010, perhaps PasteTextOnly was introduced in Word 2007 as part of the effort to "modernize" Word by replacing menus with ribbons.

Was the Paste Options button available in Word 2003 (I don't remember)? Nowadays, the plain text (unformatted text) option is called "Keep Text Only" on the Paste Options button, so I suppose there is some logic behind the command being called PasteTextOnly.

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Stefan Blom
Microsoft Word MVP

I don't remember, either, but I think the answer is no. There wasn't anything like the "Paste Options" control built into the ribbon.

In Office 2003, there were five main ways to activate commands: by choosing a command from a menu; by right-clicking a screen object (which opened a "context menu" consisting of a vertical list of context-appropriate commands). Right clicking a screen object could also be done by giving the object focus and pressing Shift + F10; by choosing a button from a floating toolbar; by pressing a hotkey (e.g., F7 = spell check; Ctrl + U = underline; etc.); and by pressing a sequence of individual keys to interact with menus and toolbars (e.g., press Alt (or F10), then F, then A to invoke the "Save As..." dialog.) The last access method is actually the same as the first, but done via keyboard instead of mouse.

In a way, the modern "Paste Options" area of the ribbon is a little like a Word 2003 toolbar. But I don't think there was a toolbar for pasting. Creating custom toolbars in Word 2003 was easy to do. I did it all the time. But it never occurred to me to create a paste toolbar!

Suzanne Barnhill would know.

While there may not have been Paste Options, there certainly was Paste Special. I recall being able to paste as text only under Paste Special.

The command in Word 97-Word 2003 may have shown up as something like EditPasteTextOnly or EditPasteSpecialTextOnly.

I just remembered Shauna Kelly's article on the paste options, which reminds me that paste options were indeed included in Word 2003:

How Paste Options works in Microsoft Word 2002 and 2003 | ShaunaKelly.com

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Stefan Blom
Microsoft Word MVP

Hi Stefan,



Reading this article is like stepping into a time machine and going back 20 years! I had completely forgotten about that Word setting.



There were fewer Word settings in those days...

Alan:

Sadly, Shauna Kelly passed away about a decade ago, but her article on multilevel numbering remains the best source on the topic.

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Stefan Blom
Microsoft Word MVP

One could add the function "Keep Text Only" to the QAT and access it via ALT, keystroke, depending on its position on the QAT.
Alan's answer #12 is definitely preferred. However, if a user already has CTRL+P assigned or has add-ins making a CTRL+ option not feasible, using the QAT and its shortcut options may be an option.
It can be confusing finding some commands with names slightly off from what is exprected.