Cool Copy and Paste Tool for Bloggers

Just had to share this. Client Bill Branson, Whiteboards That Work, sent a link to a very useful tool for bloggers.

During the first meeting we have with new bloggers, almost the first thing we tell them is NOT to copy and paste content from a Word doc, web page, email or any other rich text document. If you do that, you pick up all the hidden formatting behind the scenes and it gets pasted in to the blog post and can really mess up the look of your post. Remember, when you create a blog post, you're creating a web page that has a lot of coding built it.

One way to get around this is to copy from your doc, then paste the content into Notepad or any other plain text editor and then copy it and paste the content in to your blog editor. Quite a few steps there.

Bill Branson sent me a link to a tool called PureText. It's a simple program that creates a hot key which you use to automatically strip out extraneous code and formatting from a source doc. And it's free.

Download the zip file, install the PureText.exe file and an icon shows up in the task bar next to the time (PCs). A hot key (Windows + V) is created. When you select content to copy, simply use Windows + V to copy straight in to your blog editor. You can skip the steps of pasting into notepad, recopying and repasting.

Voila! Your blogging is more efficient! Want more time saving tips for optimizing and managing your blog? Check out our Better Business Blogging Training Program.

Comments

[Roger]

Does anyone know if there's something like this out there for the Mac? Right now, I do what you mentioned above - copy from Word into TextEdit and then paste into my blog editor. Not really a big deal but anything that would save a step I"m all for.

[Boris Mahovac - Email Marketing Coach]

Thanks for the useful resource, Denise.

Another argument for switching to http://WordPress.org as it has this type of tool built into the Visual Editor.

[Denise Wakeman]

Hey Boris, I know you want to convince me that Wordpress is better than TypePad, but I will continue to say that one is not better than the other. They are different and the blogger needs to know their abilities with technology in order to decide. I have clients who have switched off of Wordpress (not at my recommendation) because it was too complex for them, they didn't understand HTML and they didn't want to hire someone to make changes for them. Each person has different requirements and needs to pick the solution best for them.

[Denise Wakeman]

Roger, I don't personally know if there is an application like this for the mac. You may want to contact the developer and check with him. You can contact him through his website: http://www.stevemiller.net/

[Nils SaH]

PTHPasteboard 4 could do this for your OSX. It also memories up to 100 of your last copy actions. The simple version is free. For 24,95$ you can upgrade to the pro Version that gives you very enhanced filters. You can i.e. let PTHPasteboard tansform some Words into a html formated list with one keystroke. It is so useful for me that i search for a similar tool for Windows.

There is PhraseExpress and ac'tive aid, but none of them has these expandet options for tweaking the content of the pasteboard.