Free Plain Text Converter

1. Paste your formatted text into the input box above. The tool accepts text copied from websites, Word documents, Google Docs, emails, PDFs, or any other source with rich formatting.

2. Choose your conversion options. The defaults handle the most common issues: HTML tags, smart quotes, em/en dashes, ellipsis characters, and invisible Unicode. Toggle additional options like removing URLs, emails, or non-ASCII characters as needed.

3. Copy the plain text output with one click. The result is clean, portable text compatible with any system.

Every time you copy text from a website, email, or document, invisible formatting comes along for the ride. HTML tags hide in clipboard data. Word processors inject smart quotes, em dashes, and non-breaking spaces that look identical to their plain equivalents but cause problems in code editors, databases, and terminal commands.

For developers: Smart quotes in configuration files, JSON, or SQL queries cause syntax errors that are nearly impossible to spot by eye. A stray em dash in a command-line argument will silently fail. Non-breaking spaces break regex patterns and string comparisons. Converting to plain text before pasting into code eliminates an entire class of bugs.

For content creators: When migrating content between CMS platforms, rich text formatting often corrupts during import. Markdown editors choke on HTML tags. Email newsletters render curly quotes as garbled characters on older email clients. Converting to plain text first gives you a clean starting point.

For data work: CSV files with smart quotes break column parsing. Spreadsheet formulas fail when cells contain invisible Unicode characters. Database imports reject non-ASCII text. Stripping formatting before importing data prevents hours of debugging.

For everyday use: Forum posts, social media updates, chat messages, and form submissions all expect plain text. Pasting formatted text into these fields produces garbled output, broken links, or unexpected line breaks. This tool gives you clean text every time.

The plain text converter handles all of these cases in one step. Paste your text, choose your options, and copy the result. No signup, no installation, no data sent to any server.