I’m very surprised that when I select a cell, press F2, select and copy some or all of the text, that formatting is included.
If I wanted formatting, I would copy the cell. By pressing F2 (edit contents) I’m expecting to get raw characters, including any line-feeds. If it matters, this is how it works in Excel.
When in F2 mode, I expect to be working with characters only. If I press F2 and begin typing in an empty cell, I expect the cell to retain whatever formatting it had before I started. Same if I do CTRL+V with some text on the clipboard.
LibreOffice version?
Do you use some clipboard manager software?
Use the Paste Special - Unformatted text, when you want to paste the cell content only.
Have selected the content in the Formula edit box before you hit the Ctrl-C?
But consider, that e.g. you only can apply bold on some characters of a string in a cell, when you have entered the edit mode, and selected the wanted part. Now, if copying wouldn’t bring the information that can be set in the same mode, wouldn’t that be wrong?
IMO, the time to get rid of formatting is not at copy time, but when pasting - as plain text.
2 Likes
no clipboard manager.
Version: 7.0.4.2 , Debian package version: 1:7.0.4-4+deb11u6
Paste unformatted: yeah, been forced to do that. Had been opening the full dialog, unticking all the unwanted options and ticking text (redacted by LeroyG), but I see there is the Ctrl+Alt+Shift+V option.
BTW: Ctrl+Alt+Shift+V doesn’t work as expected either: In my mind: paste unformatted text means text only, regardless of the source, but it only works if source is coped from (F2) Formula-Edit mode. If a cell is copied, then Ctrl+Alt+Shift+V pastes the formatting anyway.
Acknowledged that feature exists, though in a quarter century+ of using spreadsheets, I could count on one finger the times I’ve used mixed formatting of text within a single cell. And same copy could be accomplished by copy/pasting the cell and editing the result. How often do we need to copy a portion of text from a cell while retaining mixed text formatting. For me never. I guess, my use of spreadsheets is primarily tabular data. I might format an entire row or column to highlight headers/labels, but that’s usually the end of it.
Example: I’m trying to organize and remove formatting from a spreadsheet I received: also includes email addresses, URLs, phone numbers that got turned into links. So first thing I do is clear all formatting. and disable all auto-correct options. I then copy and paste the entire range to a new Sheet using Ctrl+Alt+Shift+V: result, I still get Links where I wanted plain-text email addresses and phone numbers. So, seems the only way to accomplish this is to save it as CSV file and then import again.
Really: I think a lot of us could benefit from a feature that lets us copy/paste an entire range, sans formatting, w/o resorting to passing it through an export/import.
Not for me:
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Version: 6.4.7.2 (x86)
Build ID: 639b8ac485750d5696d7590a72ef1b496725cfb5
CPU threads: 4; OS: Windows 6.1 Service Pack 1 Build 7601; UI render: default; VCL: win;
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Calc: threaded
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Version: 7.3.7.2 (x86) / LibreOffice Community
Build ID: e114eadc50a9ff8d8c8a0567d6da8f454beeb84f
CPU threads: 4; OS: Windows 6.1 Service Pack 1 Build 7601; UI render: Skia/Raster; VCL: win
Locale: es-MX (es_MX); UI: en-US
Calc: threaded