How to paste plain, unformatted text in Pages for Mac?

Question

Level 1

79 points

How to paste plain, unformatted text in Pages for Mac?

I see the command for "Paste and Match Style" but I don't see any option for pasting unformatted text. Also, after I paste, there are no options I can see to change the formatting as we see in MS Word for Mac.

(I'm really surprised that Pages doesn't seem to have this very basic functionality which MS Word makes easy. This is one of my used commands in Word, but it's not apparently even available on Pages?! A google search turned up nothing useful. Imo, the Mac software programmers are really falling down on the job. Why should I even use Pages, when they don't even follow the basic formatting commands found in all other word processing softwares?)

iMac 27″, macOS 12.2

Posted on Feb 22, 2022 5:01 PM

Reply

Answer 1

Top-ranking reply

VikingOSX

Community+ 2024

Level 10

116,741 points

Feb 22, 2022 5:57 PM in response to Arandel

Pages is not a Word clone, so don't expect it to provide similar functionality. Apple continues to provide Pages as a consumer word processing application that is not competing with other third-party word processing applications features. Use the word processing application that suits your needs without berating Apple developers that are developing a product based on their internal design requirements.

I can copy plain text from the Terminal and just paste it into Pages. Because it is plain text, no formatting comes with it. In Pages, you would apply a standard or custom paragraph, or character style to the just pasted text to apply font metrics and other features to that content.

Reply

Answer 2

Arandel Author

Level 1

79 points

Feb 22, 2022 6:13 PM in response to VikingOSX

Thanks, that's helpful. I can copy text into the Textedit app, and then cut and paste it into Pages. Or sometimes the "match style" function works also. I don't usually use Terminal, but the TextEdit app works just fine for stripping formatting.

I like Pages for one thing, I can save and access Pages files from my computer easily and quickly on my iPhone and iPad. I use iCloud and the Files app to access files too, but I have limited iCloud storage. I believe I can use Pages to transfer documents directly to my iPhone or iPad; and access them even without internet access.

Reply

Answer 3

Feb 22, 2022 7:26 PM in response to Arandel

The Terminal was simply an example of a place to get plain-text, but if you have plain text in TextEdit that will also work.

Reply

How to paste plain, unformatted text in Pages for Mac?

Similar questions