How To Prevent Font Color Switches On Google Docs

Google Docs, Google's online competitor to such programs every bit Microsoft Give-and-take and Apple tree'due south Pages, is a powerful tool for creating documents and collaborating with other people on changes. With information technology, you can cooperatively edit discussion-processing files right in your browser!
One of my favorite born features of Docs, though, is its ability to clear formatting from text, so if you become back and realize that a quote you pasted has a bunch of bolded words, y'all could strip that right out without having to re-type the content. Here's how it works! Note that I'm using macOS in my screenshots just the bones steps work on any other platform that can access Docs.

How to Clear Formatting in Google Docs

Articulate Formatting in Google Docs

To get started, open or create a new document in Google Docs and paste in some text from an outside source. This can exist from Apple Mail, a webpage, or pretty much any application. For the re-create and paste actions, you can use either keyboard shortcuts (Command-C to copy and Command-Five to paste in macOS).
"Paste" Command in Google Docs
Now, in many cases, the text yous pasted will have its original source formatting. This ways that the pasted text won't match your document'south default font formatting, nor will it match the formatting of other pasted text blocks if they're from different sources.
Pasted Text in Google Docs
There may exist some cases where you lot desire to preserve the original source formatting, and y'all don't care about having inconsistent fonts, sizes, and styles in your certificate. In most cases, all the same, you probably want to avoid this and keep things compatible.
One solution to this is to use thePaste without formatting option, found in theEdit menu in Google Docs, or by using the keyboard shortcutCommand-Shift-V (orCommand-Shift-5 for other operating systems).
Google Docs' "Paste without formatting" Command
This takes the text that'due south in your clipboard and pastes only the plain text without any formatting.
"Paste Without Formatting" Applied
Notation that this menu item doesn't announced in all browsers; "Paste without formatting" is missing in Docs inside Safari, for instance, but its shortcut, Pick-Shift-Control-5, still works and does the same thing. (In Chrome on the Mac, that shortcut is listed instead equallyCommand-Shift-V, but Option-Control-Shift-5 will piece of work besides if you like the ease of only having to remember 1 shortcut.)
The Paste without formatting command is fine when you lot're pasting new text into your document. But what if yous already have an existing certificate total of text, and you want to remove all of the inconsistent formatting?
Selected Text in Google Docs

How to Clear All Formatting in Google Docs

The solution here is to apply theClear formatting pick, located in theFormat > Clear formatting carte du jour item or its shortcut. You tin can also use the Articulate formatting shortcut, which is Control-Backslash. Merely select a portion, or all, of your existing document, and employ either the menu choice or keyboard shortcut.
"Clear Formatting" in Docs
All of the formatting of your selected text will exist immediately removed, and you'll be left with text that matches the default Google Docs text.
"Clear Formatting" in Docs Applied
Now, at that place are a couple of differences to consider hither. When you use "Paste without formatting," Docs will strip out all of the links and images so on, every bit I mentioned. Plus, information technology will match the pasted content with whatever font yous'd used in the surrounding text, so if y'all had switched from Arial to Comic Sans (yuck), for case, your pasted-in text would friction match that fashion. "Clear formatting" doesn't do that, though; information technology will strip the text of its font, sure, only information technology won't necessarily force it to match what's around information technology. Also, information technology won't remove links or images, then if that'southward what you wanna do, plan ahead! Or become dorsum and re-copy your text and drop information technology dorsum in using Edit > Paste without formatting. But in any case, be sure that you properly attribute your quote and that y'all have permission to use it! That'south my CYA tip for the 24-hour interval, folks.