I often copy text from web pages when compiling notes for the Interest Groups I organize within the U3A, or indeed for the snippets of advice which appear on this page.
Many times the information on the page from which I am copying contains Hyperlinks (those words which normally appear in blue and are underlined). These hyperlinks are meant to let you move to other pages for additional information, or they may pop-up underlying text etc.
If I were to copy this text into a word processor such as Microsoft Word, these hyperlinks will remain in place but would be of no use as the pages to which they link are still out there on the Internet.
Now you can take the arduous route of removing all these links manually, and if your text comes from Wikipedia this could take some time, or you can easily and simply remove them as you paste the text into Windows' most simple word processor - Notepad.
This tiny program which most of us only use to read .txt files can save a lot of time when copying formatted text from the Internet or indeed from one document to another.
Notepad supports very little formatting so all that italicised, bold, underlined, superscripted, or hyperlinked text will simply become normal text when pasted into Notepad. After the text is all pasted into Notepad you then may copy it into your main word processor and format it as you wish.
This tip can also be used if you want to print out an email. Normally the option to print an email gives you a big coloured Gmail or Hotmail heading and all sorts of other rubbish which wastes ink and paper. By copying just the text you really need into Notepad, you may then print off the information in a simple way, or if you need to format it with bold or underlined words you transfer the text into the word processor of your choice.
