How to Clear All Formatting in Google Docs

When you copy and paste text from a website, a PDF, or another word processor into Google Docs, it rarely matches your current document. Instead, it brings along its original baggage: bizarre font sizes, random background highlight colors, weird line spacing, and incompatible font families. Trying to manually fix these elements one by one is an incredibly frustrating waste of time.

Instead of wrestling with font menus, Google Docs has a built-in feature that acts like a reset button. It instantly strips away all custom fonts, colors, bolds, italics, and spacing, returning the text to the default style of your current document.

Here are the fastest ways to clear formatting in Google Docs, both during the paste process and after the text is already in your document.

Method 1: Paste Without Formatting (The Preventative Method)

The best way to deal with messy formatting is to prevent it from entering your document in the first place. When you copy text from the internet, do not use the standard Ctrl + V paste command. Instead, force Google Docs to paste only the raw text.

1. Copy the text from your source (website, email, etc.) using Ctrl + C (Windows) or Cmd + C (Mac).
2. Place your cursor in the Google Doc where you want the text to appear.
3. Instead of a normal paste, use the keyboard shortcut Ctrl + Shift + V (Windows) or Cmd + Shift + V (Mac).

Alternatively, you can right-click on the document and select Paste without formatting from the context menu.

The text will appear in your document perfectly matching whatever font and size you were already using, completely ignoring the website’s original design.

Method 2: Clear Formatting Using the Toolbar Button

If you have already pasted the messy text, or if you simply want to reset a paragraph you have heavily edited with bolds and highlights, you can use the dedicated “Clear Formatting” button on the toolbar.

1. Use your mouse to click and drag, highlighting the specific text you want to reset. (If you want to reset the entire document, press Ctrl + A or Cmd + A to select everything).
2. Look at the main toolbar at the top of the screen (where you select fonts and alignment).
3. Look toward the far right end of this toolbar for an icon depicting an italicized letter T with a diagonal slash through it.
4. Click the Clear formatting icon.

All highlighting, bolding, italics, custom colors, and weird fonts will instantly vanish, resetting to your default normal text.

Method 3: Clear Formatting Using Keyboard Shortcuts

If you prefer keeping your hands on the keyboard, there is a very fast shortcut for the Clear Formatting button.

1. Highlight the text you want to fix.
2. Press Ctrl + \ (the backslash key) on Windows, or Cmd + \ on a Mac.

What Clear Formatting Does NOT Fix

While the Clear Formatting tool is powerful, it is specifically designed to target text styling. There are a few structural elements it will deliberately leave alone:

• Hyperlinks: If you paste text containing clickable links, clearing formatting removes the blue color and the underline, but the text remains a clickable link. To remove the link, you must click on the word and select the “Remove link” icon (or press Ctrl/Cmd + K).
• Lists and Bullet Points: It will reset the font of the list items, but it will not remove the bullet points or numbers themselves.
• Highlights via Background Color: Sometimes, when pasting from a web table, the text has a colored background that the Clear Formatting tool cannot remove. This is because it is a “Paragraph background color” rather than a text highlight. To remove this, highlight the text, go to Format > Paragraph styles > Borders and shading, and set the Background color to “None.”