TextEdit doesn't flatten rich text

Gnarlodious wrote:

One of the disappointing changes in this ARM OS from the Intel OS is that TextEdit does no longer strip styles from dropped or pasted text. I used to use a scratch sheet all the time to drop text onto to strip styles but that doesn't work now. Of course, if I close the document and reopen it suddenly it is now plain text. Does anyone know if this is inadvertent or permanent? Is there a TextEdit setting to force unstyled text?

Sounds more like a bug...

you can file a bug report /submit your Apple Feedback here: Product Feedback - Apple

In TextEdit>Settings I leave plain.txt as the default and use the keyboard short cuts if I need to convert a document

Shift Command T to rich text.

.txt plain text

.rtf rich text

.rtfd rich text when you include an image

TextEdit User Guide for Mac - Apple Support

The current stable release of Ventura including bug fixes, security updates is macOS Ventura 13.0.1

Keep your Mac up to date - Apple Support

Keep your Mac up to date - Apple Support

After pasting styled text into a new, blank document (assuming it is default rtf) and finding styles are not stripped, highlight all the text and press command-shift-T.

Thereafter, I'm seeing all subsequent text pasted into this same unsaved document has the styling removed.

Apple has a utility that one can run from the Terminal command line that converts rich text RTF documents to their text counterparts:

textutil -convert txt fog.rtf

and it deposits a plain text fog.txt in the same location.

The source RTF file that you provide textutil remains unchanged while the result of that conversion is the original filename with a .txt extension. The latter does not revert to a rich text document format — ever.

Doesn't happen for me on an M1 MacBook Air…

In case I didn't state my previous post clearly, if I paste rich text, links etc., into a plain text TextEdit document it strips all formatting out.

Gnarlodious wrote:

I suspect it is a bug as another user suggested.

FWIW, if it was a bug, you wouldn't be the only person reporting it.

What version of macOS are you using?

And what did you try ‘as an act of desperation’?

Gnarlodious wrote:

I suppose I should make a new plain text file and delete this old one.

I think that's best.