How to Clear Formatting in Google Sheets

When you paste data into Google Sheets from an external source—such as a website, an email, or a Word document—it rarely pastes cleanly. It often brings along unwanted fonts, bizarre background colors, strange text sizes, and stubborn bolding that clashes with the rest of your spreadsheet. Rather than manually changing the font, un-bolding text, and removing background colors one by one, Google Sheets includes a powerful tool to instantly strip away all formatting and return the text to its raw, default state.

How to Clear Formatting Using the Menu

This is the most reliable way to reset your cells to the default Google Sheets style (usually Arial, size 10, black text, white background).

1. Open your Google Sheets document.
2. Click and drag your mouse to highlight the specific cell, row, column, or block of data that contains the messy formatting. (You can also press Ctrl + A or Cmd + A to highlight the entire spreadsheet).
3. Look at the top menu bar and click on Format.
4. A drop-down menu will appear.
5. Look at the very bottom of the menu and click on Clear formatting.
6. Instantly, all custom colors, bolding, italics, custom fonts, and borders will be stripped away, leaving only the raw data in the default style.

How to Clear Formatting Using Keyboard Shortcuts (Fastest Method)

If you frequently copy and paste data from the web, learning the keyboard shortcut for this action will save you a massive amount of time.

1. Highlight the messy cells you want to clean up.
2. Press the following keys simultaneously based on your operating system:
   • On Windows or Chromebook: Press Ctrl + \ (Control and the backslash key).
   • On Mac: Press Cmd + \ (Command and the backslash key).
3. The formatting will instantly vanish.

A Note About “Paste Without Formatting”

If you want to avoid the problem entirely before it happens, you can tell Google Sheets to strip the formatting during the paste process, rather than cleaning it up afterward.

When you copy data from a website, do not use the standard Ctrl + V (or Cmd + V) to paste it into your spreadsheet. Instead:

1. Click the cell where you want the data to start.
2. Right-click the cell.
3. Hover over Paste special in the menu.
4. Select Values only (or use the shortcut Ctrl + Shift + V / Cmd + Shift + V).

This forces Google Sheets to ignore the website’s HTML styling and only paste the raw text characters, perfectly matching whatever font and size you are already using in your spreadsheet.