How I hate Microsoft Word's Edit|Paste Special menu item. Why can't Microsoft assign a keyboard shortcut to it? It is a maddening oversight and it makes me crazy when I just want to past some unformatted text – stop typing, reach for the mouse, click Edit, click Paste Special, click Unformatted Text and finally click OK. Four mouse clicks and one interrupted workflow later I have my unformatted text. Apple applications have a Paste and Match Style menu item with a keyboard shortcut – ⌥⇧⌘V. That shortcut is a bit of a handful but it still beats the tar out of doing it the Microsoft way.

Today I found a solution, at least for Word:mac 2008. TidBITS published the AppleScript-based workaround over a year ago in Word 2008 and the Paste Plain Text Dance and then updated it with a better version of the script in Updated Paste Plain Text AppleScript for Word 2008. Follow those tips and you'll soon be pasting unformatted text from the keyboard in Word.

I made one small change when I implemented it on my MacBook. I wanted the keyboard shortcut to match Apple's so that I only have to remember one shortcut. To assign ⌥⇧⌘V as the shortcut instead of ⇧⌘V as in the tip, change the name of the script to Paste Plain Text\smoV.scpt. Adding the “o” adds the Option (⌥) key to the shortcut.