Open word in text mode

[Jay Douglas]

I would like to open Word in text mode. Basically so it saves files in .txt
mode and copy-paste copies text instead of Word format. I would like to
create a short cut with command switches or something similar to open word
in this text format without loosing the default Word format of word. In
short, I'm trying to create a super notepad. I've searched, but am unable
to find a solution. Any suggestions and/or links are appreciated.

Thanks in advance!

Jay

 

[Anne Troy]

You can't really have both... but you can Paste Special as unformatted text
and save as text...
Ref:
http://www.officearticles.com/word/paste_from_an_external_source_in_microsoft_word.htm
************
Hope it helps!
Anne Troy
www.OfficeArticles.com
Check out the NEWsgroup stats!
Check out: www.ExcelUserConference.com

 

[Beth Melton]

I'm not exactly sure what you are actually trying to accomplish since
Word is for Word Documents and the Notepad is for text files. It's
sort of like saying you want to drive a Corvette but make it behave
like a Ugo. ;-)

I'm guessing you want to use Word but have it default to saving files
as text? If that's the case then go to Tools/Options/Save and change
the default Save format to Plain Text.

If you want Word to default to the Plain Text style on the Formatting
toolbar click in the text box portion of the Styles drop down and type
"Plain Text" without the quotes and press Enter. You could create a
template that uses the Plain Text style by default and use it if you
want to create a new plain text document. For that, create your
template, make sure the Plain Text style is present and go to
Tools/Options/Edit and set the Default Paragraph Style to "Plain
Text".

Perhaps if you could tell us more about what you want to accomplish
exactly with your files then we may be able to offer other
suggestions.

Please post all follow-up questions to the newsgroup. Requests for
assistance by email can not be acknowledged.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Beth Melton
Microsoft Office MVP

Word FAQ: http://mvps.org/word
TechTrax eZine: http://mousetrax.com/techtrax/
MVP FAQ site: http://mvps.org/

 

[Jay Douglas]

Well, like you said, you can save Word files as text files. You can open
text files with word. When opening a text file from word, copy/paste copies
the actual text as text. When you copy a text from the native word format,
it copies the embedded word markup.

A couple of scenarios, say I create a document with the default template and
copy paste the contents into dreamweaver, it copies all the word mark up
with the text.

If I open a text file with word, and copy paste it into dreamweaver, it just
copies the text.

I was wondering if there was a way to create a word template (.dot) file
that uses text as the default format and then have word open this word
template by using a command switch. A possible pseudo command line would
be:

winword.exe /template:textformat.dot

Now, word would be acting as a text editor per say. I could have all the
Word functionality such as spell check, C# code w/ office objects, etc.

I could use this functionality for a ton of different things, not just
copy/paste for dreamweaver.

Does this make any sense?

Thanks,
Jay

 

[ANONYMOUS]

If you want to copy plain text in any other Windows based programs such
as dreamweaver then you can do it in two ways:

1) All programs [should] have Edit/PasteSpecial/unformatted Text
2) Paste the contents in NOTEPAD first. then copy from NOTEPAD and then
paste to your application. By doin this way all the formatting is lost.

hth

 

[Jay Douglas]

That's what I've been doing. I'm trying to find a better solution.

If you want to copy plain text in any other Windows based programs such
as dreamweaver then you can do it in two ways:

1) All programs [should] have Edit/PasteSpecial/unformatted Text
2) Paste the contents in NOTEPAD first. then copy from NOTEPAD and then
paste to your application. By doin this way all the formatting is lost.

hth

Well, like you said, you can save Word files as text files. You can open
text files with word. When opening a text file from word, copy/paste
copies
the actual text as text. When you copy a text from the native word
format,
it copies the embedded word markup.

A couple of scenarios, say I create a document with the default template
and
copy paste the contents into dreamweaver, it copies all the word mark up
with the text.

If I open a text file with word, and copy paste it into dreamweaver, it
just
copies the text.

I was wondering if there was a way to create a word template (.dot) file
that uses text as the default format and then have word open this word
template by using a command switch. A possible pseudo command line would
be:

winword.exe /template:textformat.dot

Now, word would be acting as a text editor per say. I could have all the
Word functionality such as spell check, C# code w/ office objects, etc.

I could use this functionality for a ton of different things, not just
copy/paste for dreamweaver.

Does this make any sense?

Thanks,
Jay

 

[Gary Smith]

Option 3, better than either of those: PureText. I wouldn't edit without
it. It's especially good for dealing with all of the obnoxious and obtuse
formatting junk that comes with HTML.

http://stevemiller.net/puretext/

If you want to copy plain text in any other Windows based programs such
as dreamweaver then you can do it in two ways:

1) All programs [should] have Edit/PasteSpecial/unformatted Text
2) Paste the contents in NOTEPAD first. then copy from NOTEPAD and then
paste to your application. By doin this way all the formatting is lost.

hth

Well, like you said, you can save Word files as text files. You can open
text files with word. When opening a text file from word, copy/paste copies
the actual text as text. When you copy a text from the native word format,
it copies the embedded word markup.

A couple of scenarios, say I create a document with the default template and
copy paste the contents into dreamweaver, it copies all the word mark up
with the text.

If I open a text file with word, and copy paste it into dreamweaver, it just
copies the text.

I was wondering if there was a way to create a word template (.dot) file
that uses text as the default format and then have word open this word
template by using a command switch. A possible pseudo command line would
be:

winword.exe /template:textformat.dot

Now, word would be acting as a text editor per say. I could have all the
Word functionality such as spell check, C# code w/ office objects, etc.

I could use this functionality for a ton of different things, not just
copy/paste for dreamweaver.

Does this make any sense?

Thanks,
Jay

 

[Anne Troy]

I like MetaPad.
http://www.liquidninja.com/metapad/
(You can make it transparent so you can work with it and something behind
it, too.)

************
Hope it helps!
Anne Troy
www.OfficeArticles.com
Check out the NEWsgroup stats!
Check out: www.ExcelUserConference.com

Option 3, better than either of those: PureText. I wouldn't edit without
it. It's especially good for dealing with all of the obnoxious and obtuse
formatting junk that comes with HTML.

http://stevemiller.net/puretext/

If you want to copy plain text in any other Windows based programs such
as dreamweaver then you can do it in two ways:

1) All programs [should] have Edit/PasteSpecial/unformatted Text
2) Paste the contents in NOTEPAD first. then copy from NOTEPAD and then
paste to your application. By doin this way all the formatting is lost.

hth

Well, like you said, you can save Word files as text files. You can
open
text files with word. When opening a text file from word, copy/paste
copies
the actual text as text. When you copy a text from the native word
format,
it copies the embedded word markup.

A couple of scenarios, say I create a document with the default
template and
copy paste the contents into dreamweaver, it copies all the word mark
up
with the text.

If I open a text file with word, and copy paste it into dreamweaver, it
just
copies the text.

I was wondering if there was a way to create a word template (.dot)
file
that uses text as the default format and then have word open this word
template by using a command switch. A possible pseudo command line
would
be:

winword.exe /template:textformat.dot

Now, word would be acting as a text editor per say. I could have all
the
Word functionality such as spell check, C# code w/ office objects, etc.

I could use this functionality for a ton of different things, not just
copy/paste for dreamweaver.

Does this make any sense?

Thanks,
Jay

I'm not exactly sure what you are actually trying to accomplish since
Word
is for Word Documents and the Notepad is for text files. It's sort of
like
saying you want to drive a Corvette but make it behave like a Ugo.
;-)

I'm guessing you want to use Word but have it default to saving files
as
text? If that's the case then go to Tools/Options/Save and change the
default Save format to Plain Text.

If you want Word to default to the Plain Text style on the Formatting
toolbar click in the text box portion of the Styles drop down and
type
"Plain Text" without the quotes and press Enter. You could create a
template that uses the Plain Text style by default and use it if you
want
to create a new plain text document. For that, create your template,
make
sure the Plain Text style is present and go to Tools/Options/Edit and
set
the Default Paragraph Style to "Plain Text".

Perhaps if you could tell us more about what you want to accomplish
exactly with your files then we may be able to offer other
suggestions.

Please post all follow-up questions to the newsgroup. Requests for
assistance by email can not be acknowledged.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Beth Melton
Microsoft Office MVP

Word FAQ: http://mvps.org/word
TechTrax eZine: http://mousetrax.com/techtrax/
MVP FAQ site: http://mvps.org/


I would like to open Word in text mode. Basically so it saves files
in
.txt
mode and copy-paste copies text instead of Word format. I would
like to
create a short cut with command switches or something similar to
open
word
in this text format without loosing the default Word format of word.
In
short, I'm trying to create a super notepad. I've searched, but am
unable
to find a solution. Any suggestions and/or links are appreciated.

Thanks in advance!

Jay

 

[Bob Buckland ?:-\)]

Hi Jay,


You can use Word as an editor to have 'familiar feeling' tools but it's probably not as widely used as a source code editor as it
once was. More specialized tools (including even the MS Windows Script Editor that ships with Office 2000, XP/2002 and 2003) do a
nice job of *displaying* the code in different indentations and colors to help edit it, without actually saving that in your data.

You can use CSS styles attached to Word and with Word 2003 XML capabilities to also do some of that transformation, but as you
mentioned, without doing work you don't start off with much more than Wordpad/Notepad as far as those capabilities go.

You can use Tools=>Options=>General and set
[x] Confirm conversions at open
to be on. So that when you open anything but a .DOC file Word will ask you how you want it to be treated. (For example if you open
a .htm file it will suggest HTML conversion to .doc, but you can select the 'plain text' choice to tell it to present it as the HTML
source code).

You can also use Tools=>Options=>Save to select 'plain text' as the default save format for documents, however. that isn't going to
disable your ability to apply Word formatting to text in that file you open (bold, blue, 27pt font...) only to have it stripped out
again on save.

Yes, you can start Word with a template where the 'normal' style would be set up to be plain text look (courier 12 or 10 pt font for
example). And you can use registry settings or, through a template you could set the default paste format of the clipboard to be
'unformatted text' or a separate 'paste' button to do that.

In Word 2000 through 2003 the default paste/data format Word puts on the clipboard does include the markup to be able to include the
formatting from a Word document. Some programs or even different versions / releases of some programs have different methods or
abilities for utilizing what is on the clipboard. That is, the 'receiving' program may choose to 'see' just the text as the default
(but that may be 'plain (ascii) text' or unicode (2 byte) text), or RTF or the Word XML/HTML format. The same thing happens coming
into Word when pasting, usually more 'noticed' for graphics.

Using Edit=>Paste Special in Word (and where available, in other programs) shows the available formats and the default that you can
use for a given operation. Word also has, for incoming (paste) operations, the paste options button to help select how incoming
data will 'fit in' to its Word surroundings at a given spot in a document. Word does not have, unfortunately, a 'copy options'
button to do the same thing, putting reliance on the program you're going to copy to, to decide how it treats text.

As an example, MS Office FrontPage 2000 did not handle the Word clipboard output well. FrontPage 2003 is 'smarter' (i.e. tuned to
deal with it <g> by having additional paste options). In Dreamweaver MX you can paste from a Word document and then use the 'Word
cleaner' icon to shave down the Word content to 'web type' HTML by working on the markup that comes over as, for example. MS Office
(Mso)document CSS style data.

Using 3rd party editors (other than FrontPage or Dreamweaver) including the favorites of folks who have contributed to this
discussion, and similar ones such as the http://ultraedit.com include enhanced file comparison modes, spell check and 'autocomplete'
in context and other features tuned more for the 'behind the scenes' data work, just as the MS Office VBA editor in Word includes
'lookup' / autocomplete capability to help you work with VBA/macro coding within Word by guiding you through syntax and usage
choices, or the MS Visual C# 'word processing' code editor (IDE) specializes in working with that code
http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms228282.aspx.

Word can give you the look of plain text and you can supplement it with macros and add-ins to have it 'turn off as you go' the
features that would let you copy, paste, type in full Word document text feature support, but you sort of have to always 'look over
your shoulder' to watch to see that neither you or Word are trying to 'revert' to using a Word feature that isn't really tuned to
the plain text or code that you're working on <g>. It's easy to slip by just 'reaching up' and clicking on one of Words 'handy'
icons that you're used to using

=============
Well, like you said, you can save Word files as text files. You can open
text files with word. When opening a text file from word, copy/paste copies
the actual text as text. When you copy a text from the native word format,
it copies the embedded word markup.

A couple of scenarios, say I create a document with the default template and
copy paste the contents into dreamweaver, it copies all the word mark up
with the text.

If I open a text file with word, and copy paste it into dreamweaver, it just
copies the text.

I was wondering if there was a way to create a word template (.dot) file
that uses text as the default format and then have word open this word
template by using a command switch. A possible pseudo command line would
be:

winword.exe /template:textformat.dot

Now, word would be acting as a text editor per say. I could have all the
Word functionality such as spell check, C# code w/ office objects, etc.

I could use this functionality for a ton of different things, not just
copy/paste for dreamweaver.

Does this make any sense?

Thanks,
Jay >>
--
Let us know if this helped you,

Bob Buckland ?
MS Office System Products MVP

*Courtesy is not expensive and can pay big dividends*

For Everyday MS Office tips to "use right away" -
http://microsoft.com/events/series/administrativetipsandtricks.mspx

 

[kewin]

I prefer TED Notepad.. )

I liked metapad for long, but Alexander no longer works on the project
and he also won't fix several anoying bugs. TED Notepad has already
outrunned metapad in many ways.

http://jsimlo.sk/notepad/

Kew