How to strip formatting of selected text only?

Scrivener Scrivener for Windows
1

I have a problem. I have a folder that has various notes and snippets from websites. Most of the time I want to keep their original format because they may have links in the them that I may need later.

Usually, that works fine for me, but I like my own comments and notes to be in the default writing format. If the end of a pre-formatted paste ends in something unsual, no matter what I do, when I write my own text following it, it keeps the original formatting from what I pasted above.

Take this as an example, here’s a screen cap (note that quote is pasted from Wikipedia which is open source and can be redistributed for free):

In the above screen capture, you can see where at the bottom I typed “This is my note text.” What I want to do is format that to look like the following screen capture instead, in one simple click:

I tried reformatting, I tried changing the font, I tried Format > Formatting > Apply preset > Body and I tried just about everything else. Nothing happened. It stayed super script in underlined blue. The only thing that worked was for me to write it above all that text and then copy and paste it below. Even writing it in Microsoft’s Notepad didn’t fix the problem. In fact, the blue text you see there in the first picture was pasted directly from Notepad!

Surely there is a way? I understand the desire to keep formatting simple and that’s exactly what I’m trying to do, but in my notes for research I have to have formatting so I can refer back to where I originally got things. Especially since I’m working on a historical novel. I want to be sure all my facts are straight.

So! Please tell me there is a way. In fact, please tell me there is a button I can put on my toolbar that will do this for me. That is, I want a button that strips the original formatting and leaves it the way my default formatting is in Scrivener.

2

If you’re looking to remove hyperlinks from the text you pasted, with the text selected you should see a “Remove Link” command in the Edit or right-click menu.

Otherwise the easiest way to avoid formatting when pasting is to use the plain-text paste command: Edit/Paste and Match Style. So in conjunction with Ctrl-X to cut text, there’s your simple way of removing formatting from existing text.

I think something went awry with the Notepad test, there would be no way for text copied from Notepad to paste into anything else with hyperlinks, superscripts and paragraph indent formatting. But like I say the Paste and Match Style basically is putting some text in Notepad and copying it back out (or at least when that works as expected!).

There isn’t a button, but the Documents/Convert/Formatting to Default Text Style command is for cleaning up files you’ve imported or for whatever other reason you may have. Do note however that certain inline things such as hyperlinks, italics and so on will be avoided by that tool. It is deliberately programmed to preserve these things as most people do not want to actually get rid of italic text when all they want is to conform the paragraph structure and font to the defaults.

If you really want everything gone, Paste and Match Style.

3

Not sure Paste and Match Style is going to solve the user’s problem. Matching the adjacent style is precisely the source of frustration. I think the user is seeking the easiest way to reestablish the default style at the selection. I’d try Format > Formatting > Apply Preset.

If you make a preset called &default based on the default style, you’ll even have a clean accelerator key sequence: Alt-r r a d .

Forgot that I’d long ago done this. Never thought to use it!

Rgds – Jerome