Last Updated on October 11, 2026
If you use Microsoft Word to create documents and frequently copy and paste text from other sources such as websites or other documents, you might have noticed that Word will keep the formatting of those other documents when you past the text into your destination document. To get around this, many people use the paste as text only choice when pasting text into their document. In this article, we will be showing you how to make keep text only the default paste option for Microsoft Word.
This process involves changing some of the Word default settings and will apply to all of your word documents. It does not just alter the current one you are working on, so be aware of that. The image below shows the default Word font. That seems to work just fine for most people since it is a common and easy to read font. But if you are copying text from another place, there is a good chance it will not be using the same font and size as the default Word font.
Understanding the Formatting Problem
1. Review Default Pasted Text
The image below shows an example of two different fonts with bold applied. If you were to copy this text and paste it into Word, it would keep the formatting when it was added to your document. This creates a messy layout. It forces you to spend extra time manually fixing the document style.
2. Handle Missing Fonts
If your computer does not have the font installed that is used with the text you are copying, Word will substitute it with a different font. This substitute font still might not be the default Word font. You end up with mismatched paragraphs. The entire page looks completely unprofessional.
3. Use the Manual Paste Option
What most people do is go to the Paste menu and choose Keep Text Only. This forces the text to be pasted with no formatting applied to it. One problem with this is that you will need to remember to choose it from this menu every single time. Clicking this menu repeatedly wastes valuable time.
Changing the Default Paste Setting
1. Access the Advanced Settings
One way around this is to change the default paste type for the different types of text pasting settings that are available in Word. You can get to these settings by clicking on Set Default Paste when you click on the Paste icon in the ribbon. You can also go directly to the File tab and then click on Options. Both methods open the exact same configuration window.
2. Locate the Paste Options
Once you are in the Word options, you will need to go to the Advanced section. Scroll down to the Cut, Copy and Paste section. You will then see that there are several types of paste options you can change. This area controls exactly how your clipboard data interacts with your blank pages.
3. Apply the Text Only Setting
At this point, you will need to choose what circumstances you want to have the keep text only formatting option to apply to. You can do things such as change the Pasting between documents, Pasting between documents when style definitions conflict and Pasting from other programs. Change their default settings directly to Keep Text Only.
4. Save and Revert Changes
Once you have made your changes you can click the OK button to have them applied to the next time you paste text into Word. If you want to revert back to the original settings, just come back to the Advanced options and change them back to their defaults. For each one of the settings, there should be the word (Default) after the original setting. You always know exactly which one was used before.
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