Pasted text into Gmail, and now all the formatting is off in your email? Looking to find the “Remove formatting” button on the toolbar? Find out here how to remove formatting in Gmail using toolbar and keyboard shortcut.
First, Clouds from Below
Clouds lit from below just as the sun has set are among my favorite things to see. What, I wonder, could be more handsome than pure white sheets of sheep set against a dark blue sky over green and rocky hills?
The same sheets of sheep perhaps, set in a marvel of colors: nacreous clouds (from French nacre, mother of pearl) take up vivid shades of violet and pink with hints of red and yellow as the just-set sun illuminates them from below in Earth’s polar regions and conditions are cold enough. (Unfortunately, the bright colors also mean precious ozone in the atmospheric shell is breaking down.)
Now, are you looking at text that is all colors and formatting where what you want to see is clean strokes of pure text? Let’s find out how to remove formatting in Gmail:
How to Remove Formatting with a Gmail Toolbar Button
Time needed: 2 minutes.
To remove all formatting from text in Gmail using the aptly named button in the toolbar:
- Highlight the text from which you want to remove formatting.
Select all: Press Ctrl A (Windows, Linux) or Command A (Mac) to select all text in the message’s body.
Need to highlight: Without any text highlighted, removing formatting will do nothing; it will not remove formatting from text you type afterwards either.
Shortcut: See below for the shortcut to removing all formatting from the entire message. - Click Formatting options in the Gmail compose toolbar.
- Now click Remove formatting in the formatting toolbar that has appeared.
Gmail keyboard shortcut: Press Ctrl \ (backslash) on Windows and Linux or Command \ (backslash) on a Mac to remove formatting from selected text; you need not have the formatting toolbar visible for the keyboard shortcut to work.
Remove All Formatting Fast with Gmail Plain Text Mode
To strip all formatting from the body of your message quickly in Gmail:
- Click the three dots More options menu in the message composition toolbar.
- Select Plain text mode.
Add formatting: You can apply formatting again using the formatting toolbar. This will disable plain text mode.
How to Remove Formatting with a Gmail Toolbar Button: FAQ
What formatting will remove formatting remove?
When you remove formatting with the formatting toolbar, all text customization disappears:
- custom fonts
- custom font sizes
- text and background color
- indentation and
- lists
with one exception:
- quoted text will have the bar on the left replaced with
>at the beginning of each line to indicate quotation.
The text will return to your default font face, size, and color for Gmail.
Removing formatting with plain text mode does the same.
Is there a quick way to remove formatting in the Gmail app?
Alas, no.
In the Gmail apps for iOS and Android, you can remove formatting the way you apply it:
- Select the text whose formatting you want to change.
- Select Format or the formatting options that appear in the context menu.
Almost quick: Selecting all text and applying, then removing formatting is a somewhat fast way to remove the formatting in bulk.
(How to remove formatting with a toolbar button tested with Gmail in a desktop browser; updated April 2024)