Microsoft finally added new shortcuts to Word: Ctrl+Shift+V to paste plain text

The paste as plain text function is a much-needed feature for many office users and is supported in most browsers using the Ctrl+Shift+V shortcut.

Ironically, Word, as a professional word processing software, still lacks a shortcut for pasting plain text, and users have to manually select plain text with a mouse each time.

After years of user requests, Microsoft has finally added a new shortcut to Word: Ctrl+Shift+V for pasting plain text, and it has arrived in the testing phase, according to the Microsoft 365 blog.

Microsoft stated in its blog: “Wouldn’t it be great if you could just copy and paste text from a website into your document and have it look good? Imagine not having to manually remove the source formatting like font size, type, or background color.

You might be familiar with this shortcut Ctrl + Shift + V (Cmd + Shift + V on Mac)—it’s also called “keep text only” or “paste plain text”—because of its popularity in other applications like Microsoft Teams, Word for the web, Google, and Gmail. No matter what you call it, the Paste Text Only shortcut is now available in Word for Windows and Word Mac.”

Now, this feature can be used in Word for Windows and Word for Mac to help you improve efficiency, regardless of what it’s called.

In fact, the feature is currently only available in the testing phase. According to Microsoft’s statement, the version that supports this feature has just arrived in the Microsoft 365 family and commercial testing channels, so it is not officially launched yet.

These shortcuts are available to M365 Home and M365 Business Standard Beta Channel users running:  Windows version 16.0.15831.20174 or later, and Mac version 16.67.1113.0 or later.

However, family version users should already be able to use this feature, and they can check the specific version of Word by opening Word, and clicking on File, Account, and About.